STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced the acquisition of Mendeley, a London-based company that operates a global research management and collaboration platform. Researchers worldwide use Mendeley's desktop and cloud-based tools to manage and annotate documents, create citations and bibliographies, collaborate on research projects and network with fellow academics.
Launched in late 2008, Mendeley was the brainchild of three PhD students wanting an easier way to manage their research papers and collaborate with colleagues overseas. They developed a desktop app that could automatically extract metadata and keywords from PDFs, thus turning loose collections of PDFs into structured, searchable research paper databases that were synchronised to the cloud.
To welcome Mendeley's individual users, Elsevier is increasing the product's Freemium offer. The free storage level has expanded from 1 gigabyte to 2, and the amount of storage provided in the premium levels has expanded as well. For institutions, the Mendeley Institutional Edition (MIE) will continue to be available. MIE is a tool that helps universities analyse research activity in real time, complementing the traditional Impact Factor system of academic citations. It also enables librarians to extract more value from resources by optimising their subscriptions and providing a better service to their researchers by tracking which journals are being read by faculty and students.
This union extends a history of collaboration between the two companies that began in 2009. For instance, Elsevier has referred users to Mendeley, invited Mendeley to build apps on ScienceDirect using its open APIs, and sponsored Mendeley's Science Online London conferences on Open Science.
