#Mendeley - Software for #Literature Review

Mendeley can be used as more than a citation manager: it can rapidly surface the exact passages needed for a literature review—definitions, theoretical framings, research gaps, and even measurement instruments—by searching within a curated library of PDFs. The core workflow is to download and install Mendeley Desktop, register, then build a structured set of folders and import relevant papers so targeted searches can filter hundreds of documents down to a handful of useful sources.

After creating a dedicated folder for a research theme (for example, internal marketing), the next step is importing PDFs into that folder using Mendeley’s add files function. With a large library in place, Mendeley’s search bar becomes the engine for narrowing results. A plain keyword search like “internal marketing” initially highlights only single-word matches (e.g., “internal”) unless the search is treated as a phrase. When the search is refined to the right phrase—such as “internal marketing” together with a related concept like “customer service”—the results shrink dramatically, letting researchers avoid opening every paper just to find whether a specific relationship is discussed.

A practical detail matters here: Mendeley may treat quoted text as an exact phrase, and removing quotation marks can switch the search back to matching the intended wording across documents. Once a relevant passage is found, the workflow supports direct extraction into writing. Researchers can right-click and copy text, then paste it into Word, but they must format and cite it properly. For citations, Mendeley offers “copy as formatted citation,” and the citation needs to be placed both in-text and in the reference list, with formatting adjusted to match MLA-style expectations (e.g., using last names in the in-text citation).

The transcript also emphasizes that concepts often appear under multiple names. Internal marketing, for instance, can be described as internal customer orientation, internal customer orientation, or internal marketing variants. Mendeley search strings can use wildcard-like patterns (e.g., adding an asterisk) to capture these terminological variations in one sweep. The same approach extends beyond internal marketing: corporate social responsibility may appear as business social responsibility, corporate sustainability, or social responsibility.

Beyond finding relationships, Mendeley can locate the building blocks of a literature review. For definitions, researchers can search for definitional verbs and variants—such as “state,” “stated,” “define,” “defined,” or “referred”—and combine them with the target concept to isolate papers that explicitly conceptualize the term. For gaps, searches for limitation-related language (“limited,” “scarce,” “scarcity of research”) can identify which recent papers acknowledge under-researched areas, reducing the need to manually scan every PDF.

Theory selection is treated similarly: searching for “theory” reveals which papers use theoretical lenses to connect constructs, and then reading the relevant sections shows how those theories are applied. Measurement discovery is also supported by searching for “scale” or “measures,” enabling researchers to find instruments like “social climate scale” when they exist in the library.

Finally, the transcript highlights a real-world use case: when reviewers demand more on a specific link (e.g., internal marketing to knowledge management), a simple keyword search across the imported internal marketing corpus can quickly pull the relevant passages and citations, avoiding a time-consuming manual review of every paper. In short, Mendeley’s strength is turning literature review research from document-by-document searching into targeted retrieval of the exact evidence needed for writing.