Migrating from Mendeley to Zotero

TTLP

[Update, 2018: Zotero now includes a direct Mendeley importer — D.S.]

I am starting this thread to centralise issues relating to migration from Mendeley to Zotero, especially those with substantial libraries in Mendeley.

I know that I have spent a great deal of time researching on how to transfer those pdfs with bibliographies intact. At the end, it is so straight forward (at least relatively to having to deal with the bugs from Mendeley 1.7 to 1.10.1).

The key steps are:

1. Export library as RIS from Mendeley (go to "all documents", select all (ctrl+a) and the click "Export" from the File Menu. Select .ris as the filetype.

2. Import that file to Zotero (click on import in the gears menu and select the file exported from Mendeley.

3. The most important thing is WHERE one saves the RIS file. I saved it in my Mendeley organised folder, where my renamed pdfs are outputted by Mendeley.

Please refer to the following link for more details: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/30349/import-pdfs-from-mendeley-to-zotero/#Item_10



**********


For other related posts, I have centralised some relevant links:

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/6527/

http://ligarto.org/rdiaz/Zotero-Mendeley-Tablet.html

http://onsnetwork.org/chartgerink/2013/07/04/merging-mendeley-and-zotero-bib-files-windows/

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/30349/import-pdfs-from-mendeley-to-zotero/#Comment_168992

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/30349/


I am not sure if some of these solutions offered are still applicable, but thought a centralised place would be a good way to help other potential Mendeley refugees who are caught up in a toxic relationship of "too good to leave, but too bad to stay" situation (here I am not referring to Elsevier, but rather all the bugs relating to self-duplications, retrieving and synching files).

Having said that, Mendeley still trumps on the Pdf meta-retrieval, so you might want to re-jig your workflow based on the following order:

[1] Mendeley batch pdf metadata retrieval ------>
[2] Zotero's automatic duplicates control & search ------> [perhaps for some]
[3] Endnote's bibliographic formatting

I am afraid there is no "Swiss Army" knife bibliographic management software. But maybe now, there are hybrid approaches to enhance one's productivity staging different tasks across the different applications.

adamsmith

the main Zotero thread is here:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/28786/mendeley-import/

sumakana

Thanks, I am just having the opposite issue, I use Zotero as my main citation reference manager, but now I need to migrate to Mendeley, because it is the mainstream solution in my EE department.

bwiernik

Mendeley has a direct import function to import Zotero databases. It can even keep itself up to date with a Zotero database as you use it, so you can keep using Zotero and then only jump over to Mendeley when you need to collaborate with someone.

emilianoeheyns

And keep in mind the sole reason that this is easy going one way but hard the other is that Zotero thinks your data is yours so the database is easy to migrate by tools like mendeley - mendeley has started encrypting their database (claiming unspecified but implausible GDPR regulation requires them to), essentially holding your references hostage. Regardless of pros or cons of mendeley, this should give people pause.

dstillman

Just to update this old thread for people who might come across it, Zotero added a direct Mendeley importer last year.