Pros Zotero over Mendeley Desktop

Roeland.endtz
Hi all,

The team I am working with is still deciding whether to switch from Mendeley to Zotero. For obvious reasons, we are not using the Mendeley Citation Manager. However, the pre-Elsevier take-over version of Mendeley seems to have a lot of functions that were later discarded. Articles that compare the performance of Zotero to Mendeley only seem to take the post-Elsevier Reference Manger into account. For this reason, I was wondering if anyone on this forum has made the change from Mendeley *Desktop* to Zotero, and could outline in what aspects Zotero outperforms Mendeley Desktop for them.

Thank you in advance!
  • damnation
    Over the last two years we've seen a huge influx of people switching over.
    The new Mendeley Cite can still not produce footnote citations as far as I am aware, lack of support, is just a start of a list...

    Why not try it? These days it's easy to import your library and you can play around and get a feel for it.
  • adamsmith
    just of the top off my hat:
    - import from browser as well as from various metadata formats is much better
    - much better import from identifiers, including e.g. DataCite DOIs and a wider range of ISBNs
    - Metadata is more versatile
    - Google docs integration
    - Much more powerful notes -- has always been the case, even more so since Zotero 6
    - ePub and HTML annotations in Zotero 7 (currently beta)
    - Massive plugin infrastructure, including e.g. integration with Obsidian, extremeley powerful Bib(La)TeX integration, etc.

    I'd say the only real feature Mendeley Desktop has and Zotero doesn't is the ability to update metadata for existing entries, and that's going to happen in Zotero in the relatively near future.

    Also, of course, Zotero is run by a non-profit, open source and, most importantly, actively maintained: Mendeley Desktop is abandoned and will start degrading in various ways: I'd assume it won't work on the new MacOS already, newer Word versions are likely next, I'm not sure if sync even still works, but it surely won't for a very long time, etc. (Also, Mendeley was sold to Elsevier many years prior and gradually abandoned the app. It's not been great -- and hasn't added any meaningful features for years)
  • mjthoraval
    Beyond the many advantages of Zotero over Mendeley, it is important to point that Elsevier has already removed several features from Mendeley Desktop and they will completely prevent you from using it in the future:
    Mendeley Reference Manager will replace Mendeley Desktop in the long run
    As part of the continued evolution of Mendeley, from 1 September 2022, users will no longer be able to download and install Mendeley Desktop software. Existing users of Mendeley Desktop will continue to be able to sign into, use and sync their Mendeley Desktop.

    Longer-term, once we are confident that the new Mendeley Reference Manager sufficiently meets your reference management needs, we will begin the process of stopping all sign-ins to Mendeley Desktop. We will be sure to give you plenty of notice before this happens.
    https://blog.mendeley.com/2022/02/22/introducing-mendeley-reference-manager-designed-for-todays-researcher-workflow/

    I was a big fan of Mendeley Desktop (I was a supportive Mendeley Advisor before they changed to Mendeley Reference Manager), because they were the first to provide a nice UI with an integrated PDF viewer. But this is now also possible in Zotero since Zotero 6, with even better features coming in Zotero 7.

    The main advantage of Mendeley is that they wanted to introduce many new features very quickly. But the drawback is that they did not take the time necessary to implement them properly. Zotero was a bit slower, but went further with a very strong reliable product.

    Some features I still miss from Mendeley (together with the Metadata Lookup mentioned by adamsmith) are:
    - I like the display of files at the bottom of the right-side pane below the metadata to see quickly all the attachments of an entry.
    - It can recognize when a PDF file is already in your library. It takes you to the existing entry instead of creating a duplicate when dragging to Zotero a PDF file which is already in your library.
    - It gives a finer control on the metadata to select in the merging of duplicates.
    But these are minor compared to all the benefits you gain in Zotero.

    You can have a look at the page Why Zotero?, and I encourage you especially to read through the page How Zotero Support Works.
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