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Answered

Pdf are not available (mendeley)

Stéphane Dray 10 years ago updated by Erik Reinertsen 8 years ago 8
Hi,

I use bibBase with my Mendeley profile (http://pbil.univ-lyon1.fr/members/dray/publications.php). Since few days, it seems that pdf are no more available (e.g., http://www.mendeley.com/download/public/2845861/5... When I sign in on Mendeley website, pdf become available on my bibbase page.

Is it related to a new policy on Mendeley website ? Can it be solved (I did not fin a way to manage preferences for access to pdf on Mendeley website) ?

Cheers

Answer

Answer
Under review
Hi Stephane,

Thanks for pointing this out. I'll investigate this further, but yes, on first sight it seems that they have changed the permissions where logged in users can only download pdfs in their library. But I can't say for sure. Elsevier has been getting more aggressive about sueing copyright violators recently. Maybe this has something to do with that (Elsevier bought Mendeley not too long ago).

If you are at all interested in alternatives to Mendeley, I recommend Zotero. It's API is a lot nicer and more reliable and the integration with BibBase works like a charm.

-- Christian

Answer
Under review
Hi Stephane,

Thanks for pointing this out. I'll investigate this further, but yes, on first sight it seems that they have changed the permissions where logged in users can only download pdfs in their library. But I can't say for sure. Elsevier has been getting more aggressive about sueing copyright violators recently. Maybe this has something to do with that (Elsevier bought Mendeley not too long ago).

If you are at all interested in alternatives to Mendeley, I recommend Zotero. It's API is a lot nicer and more reliable and the integration with BibBase works like a charm.

-- Christian

Stephane,

This seems to be a problem that is limited to some of your papers. I've checked some of the other BibBase-Mendeley users, and their papers download just fine.

Then I started checking papers on your page and noticed that at least this one does download fine:

Procrustean co-inertia analysis for the linking of multivariate data sets. Dray, S.; Chessel, D.; and Thioulouse, J. Ecoscience, 10(1):110-119. 2003.

Is there anything different about this paper from the others in terms of permissions or so? Did you perhaps change any settings in Mendeley recently?

The download URL starts with ../download/public, so it doesn't sound like the download should be restricted in general.

-- Christian
ok, I will contact Mendeley to see what happens... I will give you some news.


Stéphane, thanks for the pointer and the clarification. That is indeed too bad that Mendeley treats some pdfs as copyrighted when in fact they are not.

Having a similar error trying to use Bibbase for my group's papers in Mendeley: https://www.mendeley.com/groups/7134621/clifford-lab/papers/


Lab site: http://gdclifford.info/publications


PDF links don't show up for several papers for which a PDF is uploaded to Mendeley. This is true even for papers that are open access, e.g. https://www.mendeley.com/research/machine-learning-decision-support-critical-care/.


Any suggestions? Thanks.

Answered

Hi Erik,


Yes, as you can see from the thread above, Mendeley groups are not the best choice when it comes to sharing PDFs and having a lot of control in general. I recommend Zotero for that instead, or, if you want full control, then use a bibtex file.


BTW, I'm not actually able to access the above linked paper from Mendeley. If I go to that page of that paper, I see this:



And the "Get full text at journal" button just gets me to a pay wall.


If you'd like to give Mendeley another chance, one thing that others have had success with in the past is to just create a new account that is shared by everyone in your group, and use that new user's "My Publications" for BibBase. For some reason Mendeley seems to be treating PDFs attached by those accounts differently.


Hope this helps.


Christian


Christian,


Thanks so much for the fast and thoughtful response.


Instead of making a brand new user I just made a folder (not group) and added a few papers to it. But when I click on "My Publications" via Bibbase, I see this error:



I will try Zotero.