Mendeley vs RefWorks
February 21, 2026 | Author: Laura Candler
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Free, universal reference manager for managing and sharing research papers, as well as creating bibliographies for research articles. Mendeley allows to search over 100 million articles from multiple publishers, quickly add PDFs to your library, organize them with collections and tags, then read and annotate them. You can work with a single database across the desktop app, web version and Word plugin. It provides 2 GB of free storage. The program features an AI assistant that thoroughly understands your library and quickly finds what you need, identifying patterns, relationships, and missing links in your references. Mendeley's AI interprets the logic behind your queries, extracting context-rich information from your documents.
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Cloud-based commercial software package for managing bibliographic references at educational or research institution. The program allows users to create references to electronic editions of journals subscribed to by the institution's library. It includes tools for administrative management, security, policy settings, institutional citation styles, analytics and reporting. RefWorks allows to collect, import and save references from virtually any source, including PubMed and the Library of Congress. It supports PDF, PowerPoint, Word, Excel and HTML formats.
Mendeley vs RefWorks in our news:
2026. Mendeley added new AI tools for article management
Mendeley, the research article management software, has added new AI features. When you're given a new article to read, the Reading Assistant helps you navigate it by providing an overview of its purpose, key points and structure. As your library grows, literature review becomes less about collecting articles and more about understanding how they relate to one another. The Ask My Library feature helps you work with saved PDFs to find relevant articles and identify connections between them. Research projects often span long periods, making it difficult to maintain context over time. The AI assistant can help you quickly familiarize yourself with key articles and find sources relevant to your current stage of research.
2016. Mendeley enables colored annotations
Mendeley now allows users to annotate PDF articles in eight different colors, enabling the creation of a rainbow of annotations and sticky notes. In addition to this feature, other changes have been made to the reference manager to enhance the annotation experience. Menus will appear when texts or annotations are selected, making the process quicker and more intuitive. Furthermore, organizing documents in the Web Library has become easier with the ability to Drag 'n' Drop documents and folders into other folders. These features are now available in the latest version of Mendeley (iOS 2.90, Desktop 1.16, Android 1.8.2). If you can't see these features, ensure that you have restarted the application while connected to the internet and that you have the latest version of Mendeley.
