Mendeley Desktop (spyware)

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Wolfghost
Posts: 253
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Re: Mendeley Desktop

#16 Post by Wolfghost »

Portable Docear is updated: Docear 1.01 Stable
download the zip-file
http://www.docear.org/software/download/

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webfork
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Re: Mendeley Desktop

#17 Post by webfork »

Wolfghost wrote:Portable Docear is updated
I don't think it's portable. Unless I missed some config trick, it wrote to Writes to ~/User/.docear and a lot of registry junk on my WinXP SP3 machine.

That said this one is a monster with TONS of features. I was really blown away.

License: GPL 3, uses GPL v2 code.
Sites: Softpedia

Edit: This has some amazing features, even just with PDFs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDAfcSHxjbM

Wow.

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Midas
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Re: Mendeley Desktop

#18 Post by Midas »

Minor update: Mendeley Desktop "development previews" are available at http://www.mendeley.com/download-mendel ... p/preview/.

Current Mendeley preview is v1.13-dev5 (changelog at http://www.mendeley.com/release-notes/development/).

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webfork
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Re: Mendeley Desktop

#19 Post by webfork »

Midas wrote: Wed Dec 10, 2014 7:15 am Minor update: Mendeley Desktop
I'm glad the program is still seeing work but, since it was first discussed, I've learned about Elsevier, which owns/operates Mendeley. I am not a fan of that company so I would have a hard time using any of their tools.

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Midas
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Re: Mendeley Desktop

#20 Post by Midas »

Precisely the reason why I stopped keeping tabs with Mendeley: it showed a lot of promise while it was being independently developed -- but then it devolved into just another corporate tool for locked in content after being acquired. There's a reason they never released a portable which looked easy-peasy to achieve from the get-go. :(

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Re: Mendeley Desktop

#21 Post by webfork »

Midas wrote: Fri Jun 01, 2018 1:04 pm Precisely the reason why I stopped keeping tabs with Mendeley: it showed a lot of promise while it was being independently developed -- but then it devolved into just another corporate tool for locked in content after being acquired.
Yeah it could have been something really awesome.

I did a bit more digging since I posted about this the other day and wanted to note why getting bought by this corporation in particular was so poisonous. Basically everything everyone is unhappy with Facebook about in terms of gobbling up data is happening with Elsevier. According to people I'm talking to in the industry, Mendeley reads your research while you're doing it and then uses that information to dictate activities in their publishing arm. It's not just harming privacy, it could harm your ability to survive in academia and publish often thankless research work.

Sadly, the link I really wanted to share is ironically behind a paywall: Elsevier Is Becoming a Data Company. Should Universities Be Wary?. Meanwhile the company is making a killing (Elsevier’s profits swell to more than £900 million) and privacy and open-research-aware universities in Europe are pushing back: Europe’s open-access drive escalates as university stand-offs spread.

In short, they're bad for research, for intellectual property, and ultimately for science as a whole.

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EDIT: Two more related links:
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"Confirming earlier speculation, Elsevier has acquired the reference management site Mendeley. Terms were not disclosed, but TechCrunch has estimated the deal to be worth between $69 million and $100 million in total. That’s approximately $30-45 per user. Given revenues that seem to be relatively slight at this point, Elsevier appears to have paid a significant multiple for Mendeley." April, 2013 - https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/201 ... -elsevier/
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Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science? June, 2017 - https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... or-science

EDIT2:
The boycott, MIT's participation, and polluting research by being in bed with oil and gas. This Reddit thread is also illuminating. You can also see their disinterest in sharing COVID research.

Reading about this anti-open access company on Wikipedia is both amusing and a great overview of concerns.

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