This past summer scientists, hackers, students, patients, and activists convened at the Open Science Summit to discuss the future of our science/technology paradigm. Topics included: Synthetic Biology, Personal Genomics, Gene Patents, Open Access/Data, the Future of Scientific Publishing and Reputation, Microfinance for Science, DIY Biology, Bio-security, and more.
One of the more interesting talks was given by Jason Hoyt from Mendeley Research Networks, a free reference manager and academic social network that can help you organize your research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest research. Mendeley’s software is all about utilizing “cloud-based” technology to organize your references and freely share information with other members of your scientific community. Not only does Mendeley organize your pdf files in a traditional reference software type manner, but it also provides trends and statistics about how many and what type of people are downloading the papers that you are interested in (i.e. graduate students, PIs, technicians etc). Furthermore, the program allows you to see how many people are reading and downloading your own research and makes suggestions for other papers you may find interesting based on papers that you’ve already downloaded (think Amazon.com). The program allows you to import references into Microsoft Word and to import and export data from traditional reference manager software such as endnote and BibTex.
The software is a great tool for collaboration and can definitely help you increase your productivity. Best of all, it’s free!
Check out the video below to learn more.
