Suggest users to ask Mendeley for unencrypted version of database

rutyggi
edited January 30, 2021
In the wiki you have a series of technicalities to export the database from Mendeley (https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/mendeley_import). This involves, if one has >1.18, sending the data to Elsevier and using 1.18 to retrieve it back unencrypted.

As you explain Elsevier stated that the GDPR compelled them to do so (https://twitter.com/mendeley_com/status/1006915998841221120)

Why, in the wiki, we don't just suggest users coming from Mendeley to send an email to Mendeley / Elsevier and asks them to either:

1. Reply back attaching a copy of their database "in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format" under art. 20.1 of GDPR

OR

2. Send the data directly to Zotero under art. 20.2 of GDPR

Why we don't suggest users these options?


  • adamsmith
    Have you tried? I'd guess the chances of this working are so small that it'd be wasting users time to tell them to and compared to the barrage of criticism they got on twitter about this, I don't think it's going to be a particularly effective form of protest.
  • emilianoeheyns
    The GDPR claim is entirely bogus and they're either banking on their users not being savvy enough to know, or they are themselves not savvy enough to know. In either case, not a group of people you want to trust with the only key to your data.

    We've been asking repeatedly for years, and they do not respond in any way.
  • dstillman
    Right, the point is that it's local data, so GDPR isn't relevant.

    If you upload it, it's already available via their API, which is how Mendeley 1.18 downloads it.
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