It is said that the forceps … for delivering babies … was invented by a doctor working in the American Midwest* who used it only to deliver the babies of people to whom he was related. The forceps caused babies who might have died during childbirth to live and may have increased the survivorship of the mothers as well. In this way, inclusive reproductive success of Dr. Forceps increased significantly. Presumably, as more people moved into the region, and still more were born there, and the land was divided up and farmed, competition between farmsteads would have increased. By using the forceps to benefit his own kin, and by NOT using it for others (he was the doctor delivering the babies) or even telling anyone else about it, Dr. Forceps increased his own fitness at the expense of everyone else’s. Hiding this new and amazing technology was probably an effective Darwinian strategy for him.
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\nI feel about Mendeley much like Dr. Forceps must have felt about his invention, except since I did not invent Mendeley, and other people can and eventually will find out about it, I might as well just give up and let you in on the secret. If you are a researcher, or a writer who writes non-fiction and thus need to keep track of source material, Mendeley will change your life. In a good way. Researchers with Mendeley will have greater Research Success (RS) than those without it.<\/p>\n
Here’s what Mendeley does.<\/p>\n
It is a bibliographic database, where you can keep your reference data (like Endnote, etc).<\/p>\n
It extracts bibliographic data when possible from PDF files.<\/p>\n
It helps you organize and keep track of the PDF files you’ve got stored on your hard drive.<\/p>\n
It lets you keep some of those PDF files on the Mendeley web site so you can access them, via the web, from somewhere else.<\/p>\n
You can sync all this stuff across multiple machines.<\/p>\n
You can “cite while you write” depending on the software you use.<\/p>\n
You can vacuum bibliographic data off the web from various places.<\/p>\n
You can collaborate with others in this endeavor.<\/p>\n
In other words, for a researcher, Mendeley is pretty much the most fun you can have with your pants on.<\/p>\n
Mendeley is cross platform, and OpenSource.<\/p>\n
Here’s what makes Mendeley good … the philosophy of the developers. I’ve talked to them, I’ve emailed with them, and I’ve examined their material and played with their software since it was in Beta. My view of their philosophy may not be what they think their philosophy is, but I personally think it’s dead on. Specifically: If there is a thing a researcher wants to do with her or his references, and Mendeley does not do it, that’s a bug in Mendeley, and needs to be fixed. If there is a vision, or viewpoint, that a Mendeley developer has about how to do stuff with references, and this is different than what some researchers want to do, the Mendeley vision is wrong, and you can’t fix that difference with marketing. But you can fix it with programming. In other words, Mendeley is made for researchers not for a bunch of pasty old vice presidents of some marketing department, or some guy who thinks he has a vision about how things work that we all need to share.<\/p>\n
Mendeley is software and connected resources designed to solve a related set of problems. And it does. Moreover, given the way Mendeley has developed over the last year or so, I fully anticipate that the software will continue to amaze and impress.<\/p>\n
Details can be found in this fact sheet (PDF)<\/a>, and the main web site is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n *The forceps were probably invented numerous times, this being one of those times, to the extent that the story I give here is not apocryphal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is said that the forceps … for delivering babies … was invented by a doctor working in the American Midwest* who used it only to deliver the babies of people to whom he was related. The forceps caused babies who might have died during childbirth to live and may have increased the survivorship of … Continue reading Mendeley: A Reference Manager and More<\/span>
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