Mendeley

Mendeley is a reference manager and academic research platform from Elsevier. Its API provides programmatic access to a user's library of research documents, annotations, files, folders, and groups, along with the Mendeley catalog and supporting reference data such as identifier types, subject areas, and institutions. Nexla connects to the Mendeley API to ingest bibliographic and research-management data and to write documents, annotations, files, and folders back to a user's account.

Power end-to-end data operations for your Mendeley API with Nexla. Our bi-directional Mendeley connector is purpose-built for Mendeley, making it simple to ingest data, sync it across systems, and deliver it anywhere — all with no coding required. Nexla turns API-sourced data into ready-to-use, reusable data products and makes it easy to send data to Mendeley or any other destination. With comprehensive monitoring, lineage tracking, and access controls, Nexla keeps your Mendeley workflows fast, secure, and fully governed.

Features

Type: API

SourceDestination

• Seamless API Integration: Connect to any endpoint as source or destination without coding, with automatic data product creation
• Visual Composition & Chaining: Build complex integrations using visual templates, chain API calls, and compose workflows with data validation and filtering
• API Proxy: Expose curated slices of your data securely with a secure and customizable API proxy that validates and transforms data on the fly
• Request optimization with intelligent batching, retry, and caching to minimize API calls and costs

Prerequisites

The Mendeley API uses 3-legged OAuth 2.0 for user-delegated access. Before creating a Mendeley credential in Nexla, you need to register an application on the Mendeley Developer Portal to obtain an OAuth client ID and client secret.

To register an application and obtain your credentials, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to the Mendeley Developer Portal using your Mendeley account.

2. Go to the My Applications page.

3. Complete the application registration form, providing an application name, a short description, and the redirect URL for your OAuth flow (the full URL of your OAuth redirect page).

4. Click Generate Secret to create a client secret, or provide your own. Copy the secret and store it securely — Mendeley does not let you retrieve it again after registration, though it can be replaced later.

5. Submit the form to complete registration. Mendeley assigns your application a numerical ID, which is your OAuth client ID.

Mendeley's OAuth authorization endpoint is https://api.mendeley.com/oauth/authorize and its token endpoint is https://api.mendeley.com/oauth/token. The default access scope is all. All API requests are made against the base URL https://api.mendeley.com. For full details on OAuth flows and available endpoints, see the Mendeley API documentation.

Authenticate

Credentials required

3-legged OAuth 2.0 flow for user-delegated access to Mendeley account data. User authorizes the app to read/write documents, annotations, and folders.

Field	Required	Secret	Description
Authorization URL	No	No	The URL endpoint where users authenticate and authorize access
Client ID	Yes	No	A unique public identifier assigned to your application
Access Scope	No	No	A space-separated list of permissions your application requests
Token URL	No	No	The URL endpoint where authorization codes are exchanged for access tokens
Client Secret	No	Yes	A private key used to authenticate your application when requesting tokens
Base URL	Yes	No	Mendeley API base endpoint

Create a credential in Nexla

1. After selecting the data source/destination type, click the Add Credential tile to open the Add New Credential overlay.

2. Enter a name for the credential in the Credential Name field and a short, meaningful description in the Credential Description field.

3. Enter your OAuth application details, including the Client ID and Client Secret you obtained in Prerequisites, along with the Authorization URL, Token URL, and Access Scope. The Base URL defaults to https://api.mendeley.com.

4. Complete the OAuth 2.0 authorization flow when prompted, signing in to Mendeley and authorizing Nexla to access your account data.

5. Click the Save button at the bottom of the overlay. The newly added credential will now appear in a tile on the Authenticate screen during data source/destination creation.

Keep your Client Secret confidential. If it is compromised, generate a replacement secret from the Mendeley Developer Portal and update your Nexla credential. For detailed information about OAuth authorization and available endpoints, see the Mendeley API documentation.

Use as a data source

To create a new data flow, navigate to the Integrate section, and click the New Data Flow button. Select the Mendeley connector tile, then select the credential that will be used to connect to Mendeley, and click Next; or, create a new Mendeley credential for use in this flow.

Endpoint templates

Nexla provides pre-built templates that can be used to rapidly configure data sources to ingest data from common Mendeley endpoints. Select the endpoint from which this source will fetch data from the Endpoint pulldown menu. Available endpoint templates are listed in the expandable boxes below.

[Rest API] List Documents

Returns a list of documents in the authenticated user's Mendeley library.

This endpoint uses link header pagination. Nexla automatically follows the Link header to fetch subsequent pages of data. For detailed information about documents and response structures, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] Retrieve a Single Document by ID

Retrieve a single document by ID.

This endpoint requires the document Id to retrieve. For detailed information about documents and response structures, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] List Annotations

Returns a list of annotations from the user's Mendeley library.

This endpoint uses link header pagination. Nexla automatically follows the Link header to fetch subsequent pages of data. For detailed information about annotations, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] List Files

Returns a list of files attached to documents in the authenticated user's library.

This endpoint uses link header pagination. Nexla automatically follows the Link header to fetch subsequent pages of data. For detailed information about files, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] List Folders

Returns a list of folders in the authenticated user's Mendeley library.

This endpoint uses link header pagination. Nexla automatically follows the Link header to fetch subsequent pages of data. For detailed information about folders, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] List Groups

Returns a list of groups that the authenticated user is a member of.

This endpoint uses link header pagination. Nexla automatically follows the Link header to fetch subsequent pages of data. For detailed information about groups, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] List Trashed Items

Returns a list of documents and files that have been moved to the user's trash.

This endpoint uses link header pagination. Nexla automatically follows the Link header to fetch subsequent pages of data. For detailed information about trashed items, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] Search Catalog

Searches the Mendeley catalog for documents matching specified criteria.

This endpoint uses link header pagination. Nexla automatically follows the Link header to fetch subsequent pages of data. For detailed information about catalog search, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] Get User Profile

Returns the authenticated user's profile information.

For detailed information about profiles, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] List Identifier Types

Returns a list of all available document identifier types in Mendeley.

For detailed information about identifier types, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] List Subject Areas

Returns a list of all available subject areas for categorizing documents in Mendeley.

For detailed information about subject areas, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] List Institutions

Returns a list of academic institutions available in the Mendeley database.

This endpoint uses link header pagination. Nexla automatically follows the Link header to fetch subsequent pages of data. For detailed information about institutions, see the Mendeley API documentation.

Once the selected endpoint template has been configured, click the Test button to the right of the endpoint selection menu to retrieve a sample of the data that will be fetched. Sample data will be displayed in the Endpoint Test Result panel on the right, allowing you to verify that the source is configured correctly before saving.

Manual configuration

Mendeley data sources can also be manually configured to ingest data from any valid Mendeley API endpoint, including endpoints not covered by the pre-built templates, chained API calls, or custom request parameters. Select the Advanced tab at the top of the configuration screen, and follow the instructions in Connect to Any API to configure the API method, endpoint URL, date/time and lookup macros, path to data, metadata, and request headers.

Once all of the relevant settings have been configured, click the Create button in the upper right corner of the screen to save and create the new Mendeley data source. Nexla will now begin ingesting data from the configured endpoint and will organize any data that it finds into one or more Nexsets.

Use as a destination

Click the + icon on the Nexset that will be sent to the Mendeley destination, and select the Send to Destination option from the menu. Select the Mendeley connector from the list of available destination connectors, then select the credential that will be used to connect to Mendeley, and click Next; or, create a new Mendeley credential for use in this flow.

Endpoint templates

Nexla provides pre-built templates that can be used to rapidly configure destinations to send data to common Mendeley endpoints. Select the endpoint to which data will be sent from the Endpoint pulldown menu. Then, click on the template in the list below to expand it, and follow the instructions to configure additional endpoint settings.

[Rest API] Create Document

Create a new user document (with metadata) in the authenticated user's library or a group.

Each record from your Nexset is sent as a JSON request body to create a new document. The document structure must match the format expected by the Mendeley API. For detailed information about document creation, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] Update Document

Update metadata on an existing user document (title, authors, year, type, etc.).

This endpoint requires the document Id to update and sends the updated metadata as a JSON request body. For detailed information about updating documents, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] Delete Document

Move a document to trash (soft delete).

This endpoint requires the document Id to delete. For detailed information about deleting documents, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] Restore Trashed Document

Restore a trashed document back to the user's library.

This endpoint requires the document Id to restore from trash. For detailed information about the trash resource, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] Create Annotation

Create a new annotation (highlight or sticky note) on a document.

Each record from your Nexset is sent as a JSON request body to create a new annotation. For detailed information about annotations, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] Update Annotation

Update an existing annotation's text, colour, or position.

This endpoint requires the annotation Id to update and sends the updated fields as a JSON request body. For detailed information about annotations, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] Delete Annotation

Delete a specific annotation.

This endpoint requires the annotation Id to delete. For detailed information about annotations, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] Upload File

Upload a file (e.g. PDF) and attach it to a document.

For detailed information about the files resource and required headers, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] Delete File

Delete a file attachment from a document.

This endpoint requires the file Id to delete. For detailed information about the files resource, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] Create Folder

Create a new folder (optionally inside a parent folder or group).

Each record from your Nexset is sent as a JSON request body to create a new folder. For detailed information about folders, see the Mendeley API documentation.

[Rest API] Add Document to Folder

Add a document to a folder.

This endpoint requires the folder Id and sends the document reference as a JSON request body. For detailed information about folders, see the Mendeley API documentation.

Manual configuration

Mendeley destinations can also be manually configured to send data to any valid Mendeley API endpoint. Select the Advanced tab at the top of the configuration screen, and follow the instructions in Connect to Any API to configure the API method, data format, endpoint URL, request headers, attribute exclusions, record batching, and response webhooks.

Mendeley APIs expect JSON format for most write operations. For update operations, include the ID of the object to be updated at the end of the URL.

Save & activate

Once all endpoint settings have been configured, click the Done button in the upper right corner of the screen to save and create the destination. To send the data to the configured Mendeley endpoint, open the destination resource menu, and select Activate.

The Nexset data will not be sent to the Mendeley endpoint until the destination is activated. Destinations can be activated immediately or at a later time, providing full control over data movement.