Download:
Mendeley
Comparison Grid (version 0.03) [exe] [zip]
‘Mendeley Comparison
Grid’ aims to help you distinguish your research. When building up your literature report, the
comparison grid helps you distinguish which papers have done what and when, but
importantly what hasn’t been done.
Enabling people easily see what the gap or difference between your work
and others is.
Current version uses
the Mendeley ‘tags’ to embed data for your generated grid. As the Mendeley API evolves so will this
application.
[1] You need to set tags in Mendeley which the
application extracts and uses to configure your chart. (Once Mendeley API evolves this will be
modified to allow you to update your Mendeley data from the program, till then
you have to set it from inside Mendeley).
Each paper has tags
set, e.g.
Paper 0
Tags:
paper:robotics;realtime:yes;type:controller
Paper 1
Tags:
paper:robotics;realtime:no
Once you’ve added your
tags, your ready to use the program, start up the Comparison Grid program.
[2] Click the button,
‘Grab Data Mendeley’. This will grab the
information from each document from Mendeley.
It will display the log status as it iterates through the papers.
[3] Click the button, ‘Build Comparison
Chart’. This will show you the generated
table. Goto Home tab to change if you
want just the first author or all authors displayed. Additionally you can have only papers
included from specific folders.
What is the problem?
Easily identify how
your research differs from others and what your contribution is.
Why is it interesting and important?
Using the Comparison Grid, you can identify gaps
and similarities with other research early on.
People can take a quick look at your work and quickly see what your
contribution is.
Why is it hard?
Gathering the relevant
papers, and building a grid can be a slow painful process. Your work can be in a state of flux
initially, new papers appearing, and additional content to relate against. The Comparison
Grid can be updated and generated as quickly and easily as you add and
modify your work.
Why hasn’t it be solved before?
Mendeley has enabled
others to share its research and provided an easy flexible system upon which
you can manage your research. With the
release of Mendeley API, it’s now possible to create this software to give you
the comparison grid.
What are the key components and any specific limitations?
The Comparison Grid’s key components are its
simplicity and flexiblity. You can
customize it and tailor it to show the necessary results of your work. It’s only limitation is that the current
Mendeley API doesn’t allow you to modify document tags or link custom data with
documents. Therefore, you have to edit
your documents and tag data within Mendeley so that the Comparison Grid can use it.
This is a small price to pay though, to produce such a useful tool.
Tomorrow?
Each new revision of
the Comparison Grid gains more
features and becomes an even more invaluable tool. Even such early revisions have gained lots
of interest from collegues, and is currently being used by more and more
people. If you have any ideas, please
email me and hopefully I can add them in further releases.
Requests
# Choose author or
citation format for identifier.
# Auto extract
citation count from Google Scholar (and others) and display it on the grid for
information.
# Optimise data
reading (use multiple threading to read data faster)
Updates
# [08-11-2011] Fix
bug, only include documents in selected folders – Thanx Philippe.
# [08-11-2011] Tag
names aren’t case sensitive anymore – Thanx Philippe.
# [04-11-2011] Fix bug
with folder hierarchy, ordering and include/exclude – Thanx Philippe.
# [04-11-2011] Add a
progress bar while reading Mendeley data.
# [04-11-2011] Fix
build table crash bug, also default no-folders selected – Thanx Philippe.
# [03-11-2011] Fix
maximum abstract size bug (was 4096) – Thanx Philippe.
# More robust
# Sends crash email if
it encounters a problem so later revisions are even more stable
___________________________________________________________________________
For
comments and feedback:
email
bkenwright@gmail.com