Choosing a Citation Manager: From Mendeley

Mendeley is designed to be a research manager like Endnote which handles primarily PDFs. There are some drawbacks to Mendeley, which may cause some users to want to switch to another citation manager, like perhaps Endnote.

On this page, we will outline the steps that you need to go through in order to transfer your Mendeley library to another citation manager.

To export your citations from Mendeley, you need to:

1. Open Mendeley
2. Select all your citations in your library by clicking on Edit and then Select All in Mendeley. Or you can press Control and A on a Windows computer or Command () and A on a Mac computer.
3. Click on File then Export in Mendeley, like so:
   
4. Select where you want to save the file. The Desktop is often the best place to save this file, so that you do not forget where you saved it. Now click on the dropdown box labeled Save type as and select the RIS - Research Information Systems (*.ris) format. This format is the most compatible with all the other citation managers, so it's best to use this one. Like so:
   

Now your Mendeley library is ready to be imported into another citation manager.

1. Open Endnote and select File then Import then File. Like so:
   
2. Choose the file that you want to import. Now select the Reference Manager (RIS) Import option and then click on Import.
   

1. Open Zotero and click on the Gear icon and select Import. Like so:
   
2. Select the file that you exported from Mendeley and click open

 Log in to your Sciwheel (F1000) account and navigate to My References. 

2. Select the Import References button.

3. From the resulting menu, drop down References to view your options.

From here, there are two options:

4a. First Option: Select the icon labeled Mendeley.

5a. A page will pop up asking you to grant F1000 access to your Mendeley account. 

6a. Enter your email and password, and you will be redirected back to F1000 to select options for importing. Choose your options and click on Import.

4b. Second Option: Select the icon of a page with an asterisk labeled RIS, BIB, NBIB & EndNote XML files.

5b. Select the file you exported from Mendeley and click open.