Mendeley: a powerful tool to organise and manage your references
19/10/2026
Are you looking for a way to manage your references, create in-text citations and reference lists for your assignments or thesis? If so, you may wish to consider using Mendeley.
What is it?
Mendeley is a free, online reference manager that helps you to store and organise your references. Mendeley integrates with MS Word to create in-text references and bibliographies.
How can it help me?
Mendeley and Mendeley Cite will help you to:
- organise your references in one place – you can create collections, groups and tags for specific topics
- easily insert citations into your documents
- create reference lists in many styles including APA7 Author-Date or NLM numbered which are used at Cranfield
Specific features of the free Mendeley service which make it popular among users are:
- The option to drag and drop PDF files directly into your Mendeley library
- The ability to read, highlight and annotate PDFs in your library
- A look-up facility that uses ArXivID, DOI or PMID to complete references within your library
- Up to 2GB storage space and the option to create five private groups with up to 25 members (ideal for group projects!)
Mendeley is a powerful tool, but used in isolation it will not create accurate references. To create accurate references, Mendeley has to be used in combination with your knowledge and understanding of referencing, referencing styles and plagiarism. Further information about referencing and avoiding plagiarism can be found on the library website and if you are a current student look for your Referencing and Avoiding Plagiarism course on Canvas.
Ready to get started?
Read our guide to creating an account
Want to learn more?
Check out our guide for using Mendeley.
Check out our guide to using the Mendeley Cite Add-in with Word.
We also offer regular training sessions on using Mendeley to get you started.
Image by Mariann Szőke from Pixabay
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