Mendeley is speeding up the application of scientific discovery by providing researchers with real-time statistics about new research trends.

London, UK -- (SBWire) -- 03/03/2010 -- Helping the shift of scientific research into the 21st century world of collaboration, sharing and openness, Mendeley Research Networks (http://www.mendeley.com) lets scientists, researchers and university students publish and share their papers, work with peers around the globe and get feedback in real-time. Put simply, it is engendering a revolution in the way research is conducted and disseminated: Science 2.0.

One of the sharpest debates in science right now is centred on the future of academic publishing. Scientists and researchers are predicting the end of traditional models of research publication because they are not aligned with the digital world, in which speed, transparency and social ties are key requirements.

UK-based start-up Mendeley is causing a real stir in academia and already has high-profile supporters because it is putting the emphasis on real-time data, collaboration and feedback.

Dr Werner Vogels, chief technology officer at Amazon, and a former research scientist at Cornell University, has said: “I strongly believe that Mendeley can change the face of science.”

What is Mendeley and how does it work?

Mendeley Desktop organizes your research paper collection and citations. It automatically extracts references from your documents, generates bibliographies and is freely available on Windows, Mac OS and Linux.

Mendeley Web lets you access your research paper library from anywhere, sharing documents in closed groups and collaborating on research projects online. It connects you to like-minded academics and puts the latest research trend statistics at your fingertips.

Just as sites like Last.fm lead to the discovery of new music and the creation of communities around specific musical interests by “scrobbling” music collections, Mendeley is driving scientific discovery and creating virtual research networks by scrobbling research paper collections.

More than fourteen million research articles have been uploaded to Mendeley as the database doubles in size every eight to ten weeks.

Researchers at some of the world’s most respected academic institutions are already using Mendeley to store critical research papers and to facilitate collaboration among scientific peers around the world.

The 10 biggest user bases of Mendeley are: Stanford, MIT, Cambridge, Harvard, Michigan, RWTH Aachen, Cornell University, Edinburgh, Imperial and UCL

Mendeley’s first public beta was released in December 2008 and now has more than 100,000 users. Mendeley is free to use and is soon set to move out of beta and offer premium accounts, but what is free now will remain free in the future.