29 comments

• Jørgen Lissner commented  ·  April 11, 2013 11:48 a.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  Mendeley, please give this task highest priority! My collection of printed pdf's is growing and it has become increasingly more difficult to locate the hardcopies on my shelf. It is not possible for me to just to do with the digital versions.

• Ruslan Salamatin commented  ·  January 7, 2013 2:15 p.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  Agree, This is a critical feature!

• IanM commented  ·  December 13, 2012 2:08 p.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  Awesome!

• Amro commented  ·  May 31, 2012 7:34 p.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  This is a critical feature!

• IanM commented  ·  April 30, 2012 8:19 p.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  Some feedback here...

  http://feedback.mendeley.com/forums/4941-mendeley-feedback/suggestions/2794625-please-look-at-feedback-110663-show-unique-identi

• AdminRobert Knight (Admin, Mendeley) commented  ·  April 27, 2012 4:40 a.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  The ability to customize the table view is planned and as part of this, you could show the citation key field for each entry. The citation key is primarily for use with BibTeX but you can use it to store a unique identifier in an arbitrary format for each entry.

• Ethan Mora commented  ·  April 19, 2012 3:43 p.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  Yes Please add this feature. Does it exist already? If so let me know!!

• fcomer commented  ·  April 2, 2012 8:44 a.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  Hi Robert,

  I agree completely with this idea, for most of the reasons already stated.

  The option to import record number/unique identifier from Reference Manager, Endnote, or Refworks is important even if you don't have printed hard copies of your bibliography records(which I do for my most frequently accessed papers).

  I have downloaded PDF files for all of my records in Endnote, and more recently, Refworks. Like others in the thread, these are all linked to my reference database and reside in a folder, with the PDF files numbered sequentiallly (I stopped trying to give descriptive names to reference files long ago). When I exported my library using RIS format, Mendeley was able to import the references, but without the record number AND without linked PDF's. Manually entering the PDF's into my Mendeley library would be challenge enough, but without being able to sort by record number and add the PDF file #1 to Record #1, etc., it is untenable. No way am I going to open each numbered PDF file to determine which Mendeley record it goes with.

  It seems that adding a record number/unique identifier and automatically importing them from other databeases would be an easy fix. In the meantime, the lack of this function is preventing me from making the switch to Mendeley.

• IanM commented  ·  February 21, 2012 9:53 p.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  Hi Robert,

  So it seems a chunk of us have hard copies of papers that are not available electronically. I know that;s a hard one to get your head around young people but such old fogies do exist! :)

  These documents fill our filing cabinets, just as the newer PDF cousins fill up our hard drives. The paper versions can have a hand-written number on their dog-eared corners. This is a number the was assigned through the use of something like Reference Manager form Thomson Research. This number, an essential link between our electronic database and our filing cabinet, does not see to be imported by Mendeley wither in the IRS or xml export form Reference Manager.

  Any chance this is a feature that is coming soon or a workaround that exists now? It seems we'd all love to move to Mendeley but this one factor is holding us up.

• Mrs Jemeima Pearec commented  ·  September 21, 2011 1:09 a.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  i need to entre my unique numbers for saturday 17th and sunday 18th spetember

• AdminRobert Knight (Admin, Mendeley) commented  ·  September 15, 2011 7:16 a.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  The software should generate unique keys if the citation key field is empty at the point of export. However, it will not alter keys on import if there are duplicates or if multiple users add documents to a group with the same key.

  If you can find a reliable way to make the program generate duplicate keys for papers which were not originally imported with a key, please let us know.

• [Deleted] commented  ·  September 15, 2011 6:26 a.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  BUT there is still a major problem with the "citation key" within mendeley! - the software does not check or generate UNIQUE citation keys. it allows to have them same key for many papers and even generated the same key for many documents. some times it adds an a b c d etc, but often not!

• AdminRobert Knight (Admin, Mendeley) commented  ·  September 10, 2011 9:32 a.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  Hello Sirius - You can use the citation key field. This field was originally added for use with Bibtex but you can use it for this purpose. If blank, this field will be populated automatically when an entry is exported to Bibtex.

• Sirius commented  ·  September 10, 2011 7:51 a.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  The lack of a unique identifier for each record in the library is the only thing that prevent me from switching to Mendeley, and I suspect a LOT of people are with me on this.

• IanM commented  ·  August 31, 2011 5:40 a.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  Absolutely want this. 3000 printed PDFs need a key. I currently use Reference Manager and won;t change without my numbers. Guys?

• Rahul Gaur commented  ·  March 11, 2011 9:01 p.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  I would like to express my strong support to this idea as one does need a quick way of getting to the print out. Please try to implement it.

• Graham commented  ·  February 23, 2011 2:07 p.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  I've a legacy library of reprints and copies of book chapters, all hard copy and identified in Reference Manager 10 by the unique Ref ID which is written on the copy. There are over a thousand articles that I do not have pdfs of. It would be really useful to have this functionality in Medeley. Ref Man is just too expensive for the little extra that it offers. (Note Ref Man 10 doesn't support XML)

• Thanos commented  ·  October 28, 2010 8:02 a.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  +1 from me.

• John commented  ·  October 6, 2010 1:04 p.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  I have a unique number in my Reference Manager library and on all my printouts. I need this number to quickly find my printed paper versions. I will note use Mendeley unless there is a tool to laber each item in the library with a unique number automatically...

• Ralf B. Schaefer commented  ·  August 31, 2010 3:19 a.m.  ·  Flag as inappropriateFlag as inappropriate  ·  Delete

  Just to let you know - there is a workaround for all people having access to UNIX shell (or unix derivatives such as Mac or Linux):

  Take your .xml endnote file and replace the "rec-number" in the code with "Label". In Mendeley the Endnote record number is given in the "Tag" field and you can use your old literature database with pdfs.

  In the Shell window (such as Terminal on Mac OS X) just write:
  sed 's/rec-number/Label/g' input file path > output file path

  In Windows you can do it by hand using any texteditor with search and replace.