Zotero versus Mendeley

So, what are they?

These are free, easy to use and convenient reference management applications to help you save, organise and store your references. They allow you to create in-text citations and bibliographies, and both offer a desktop and online access.

But which one is the best for you?

The I&LS team has done a bit of research to find out how these two products compare. But deciding which one to use will depend on your preferences and working style…

Access	Desktop and online. Works with IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari.	Online: on Firefox browser with plug-in installed. A desktop version – Zotero Standalone – works with Chrome and Safari.
Free online storage	2GB personal space + 100MB shared	300MB
Additional storage cost	5GB: £3.99/month 10GB: £7.99/month Unlimited: £11.99/month	2GB: $1.67/month (£1) 6GB: $5/month (£3.10) 10GB: $8.25/month (£5.10) 25GB: $20/month (£12.50)
Annotation	Integrated PDF viewer (highlights and annotates files). Plus you can attach notes to items	You can attach notes/tags to items and add notes to collections
Rich text notes	No	Yes
Compatibility/mobile version	Mendeley Lite app for iPad/iPhone.Third party apps for Android	Only third party apps: Zandy, ZotPad, BibUp, Scanner for Zotero, ZotFile
Citation count	No	Yes – Zotero Scholar Citations plugin for Firefox version only
Search for full-text within Cambridge	Yes, but only when using the online version	Yes, using a proxy server available from UL
Strengths	Social collaboration features: possible to see what other users read/cite; easy to find people with similar research interests Works well with large collections of PDFs Can automatically re-name and organise PDFs Good at pulling bibliographical data from PDFs	Open source Save as you browse: you can save almost anything you find on the web Can automatically save PDFs Strong online support, lots of user documentations Advanced search functionality
Weaknesses	Unreliable web importer	Limited free online storage
Exporting directly from databases (save as you browse)	ABI Inform Complete (ProQuest) Key Note PubMed Web of Knowledge Google Scholar Google Books Wikipedia	ABI Inform Complete (ProQuest) Business Source Complete JSTOR PubMed SAGE journals Science Direct Scopus Web of Knowledge Dawsonera (ebooks) LibrarySearch catalogue Google Scholar Google Books Amazon Wikipedia

The above information  is correct @ 11 November 2013. Please do come and talk to us if you would like advice in person.