4 ms·

I have tried several times to use Mendeley but always without success. The interface design and usability suck. Btw, why the Last.fm of research and not the Fa

by ssn 17y ago

I have tried several times to use Mendeley but always without success. The interface design and usability suck. Btw, why the Last.fm of research and not the Facebook/Linkedin/whatever of research?

diN0bot 17y ago
i wondered the same thing. i've heard of last.fm, but i have no idea what it is other than something about music (.fm domains still confuse me). whereas, who doesn't know about facebook or linkedin? i don't use those two, either, but i've logged into each once before and i grok the idea. maybe the crowd who uses last.fm is the same open-data crowd who uplaod research papers?
- ephermata 17y ago
  last.fm uses a plugin for your music player to record to which songs you listen, and for how long. You can then elect to expose this to your friends on last.fm or use this with last.fm's collaborative filtering to suggest new songs. The idea of doing this for research papers isn't bad, but I wonder how many people will pick it up. Depending on the subfield, I already see people act secretively about the current direction on which they are working, even with close colleagues. Sometimes it's about fear of being scooped, other times it's about trying a different direction. That would work against doing a stream of papers read, even if you could elect to share it only with some people. Maybe more of an issue is the network effect. To really show value, I think they will need to capture enough people in specific sub sub areas that new ideas result, leading to publishable papers. Getting those people on to the service is a chicken and egg problem.
  - barry-cotter 17y ago
    Looks like they've got the network effect licked London-based Mendeley, which calls itself “the Last.fm of research”, has announced that it’s reached something of a milestone today – claiming 100,000 users and 8 million research papers uploaded to the site in less than a year since its launch. Furthermore, the online database is doubling in size every 10 weeks, says the company.
deleted 17y ago
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ujjwalg 17y ago
I have also tried using Mendeley but never used it after a day of trying it. Papers for Mac is so much better and they have an iPhone app too. Hopefully, Mendeley will follow suit.
- las3rjock 17y ago
  Another Papers user here, and I also use a combination of CiteULike ( http://www.citeulike.org http://www.citeulike.org ) and Bibdesk ( http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net ). I find either system both easier and more powerful than Mendeley.

by ssn 17y ago

I have tried several times to use Mendeley but always without success. The interface design and usability suck. Btw, why the Last.fm of research and not the Facebook/Linkedin/whatever of research?

diN0bot 17y ago

i wondered the same thing. i've heard of last.fm, but i have no idea what it is other than something about music (.fm domains still confuse me). whereas, who doesn't know about facebook or linkedin? i don't use those two, either, but i've logged into each once before and i grok the idea. maybe the crowd who uses last.fm is the same open-data crowd who uplaod research papers?

ephermata 17y ago
last.fm uses a plugin for your music player to record to which songs you listen, and for how long. You can then elect to expose this to your friends on last.fm or use this with last.fm's collaborative filtering to suggest new songs. The idea of doing this for research papers isn't bad, but I wonder how many people will pick it up. Depending on the subfield, I already see people act secretively about the current direction on which they are working, even with close colleagues. Sometimes it's about fear of being scooped, other times it's about trying a different direction. That would work against doing a stream of papers read, even if you could elect to share it only with some people. Maybe more of an issue is the network effect. To really show value, I think they will need to capture enough people in specific sub sub areas that new ideas result, leading to publishable papers. Getting those people on to the service is a chicken and egg problem.
- barry-cotter 17y ago
  Looks like they've got the network effect licked London-based Mendeley, which calls itself “the Last.fm of research”, has announced that it’s reached something of a milestone today – claiming 100,000 users and 8 million research papers uploaded to the site in less than a year since its launch. Furthermore, the online database is doubling in size every 10 weeks, says the company.

deleted 17y ago

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ujjwalg 17y ago

I have also tried using Mendeley but never used it after a day of trying it. Papers for Mac is so much better and they have an iPhone app too. Hopefully, Mendeley will follow suit.

las3rjock 17y ago
Another Papers user here, and I also use a combination of CiteULike ( http://www.citeulike.org http://www.citeulike.org ) and Bibdesk ( http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net ). I find either system both easier and more powerful than Mendeley.