University of Glasgow

Roderic Page

Quick note on an app I threw together using the [Mendeley
API](http://dev.mendeley.com/) that I discussed in the [previous
post](http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2010/08/mendeley-api-we-bring-awesome-if-you.html).
This app is crude, and given that the Mendeley API is rate-limited and
in flux it might not work for you.  
  
The basic idea is to embellish make the list of literature cited in an
article with information that might help a reader decide whether a given
citation is worth reading. One clue might be how many people on Mendeley
are reading that article. So, my app takes an article, extracts the list
of cited literature, and for each article with a PubMed identifier it
asks Mendeley \"how many readers does this article have?\" For now the
app is restricted to using articles from the
[BiomedCentral](http://www.biomedcentral.com/) series as these have Open
Access XML with literature cited lists that contain PubMed numbers (PLoS
articles, for instance, don\'t have these, for now I\'m avoiding the
overhead of finding identifiers for the articles). I\'m using PubMed
identifiers as the [Document
Details](http://dev.mendeley.com/docs/public-resources/search-details)
method in the Mendeley API doesn\'t handle DOIs at present.  
  
The app is at <http://iphylo.org/~rpage/mendeley/>, and the default
article I\'ve chosen to demonstrate the app is **Robust physical methods
that enrich genomic regions identical by descent for linkage studies:
confirmation of a locus for osteogenesis imperfecta**
[doi:10.1186/1471-2156-10-16](http://iphylo.org/~rpage/mendeley/index.php?doi=10.1186%2F1471-2156-10-16),
but you can enter the DOI of any BMC article to give it a try. Below is
a screenshot of part of the list of literature cited by this paper,
together with readership numbers:  
  

::: {style="text-align:center;"}
![readership.png](http://lh4.ggpht.com/_Gct8lVAxKqQ/TGcHbHQ8wtI/AAAAAAAAAtU/Z2yw29vN6lU/readership.png?imgmax=800){border="0"
width="400"}
:::

  
The default article has [4 readers in
Mendeley](http://www.mendeley.com/research/robust-physical-methods-that-enrich-genomic-regions-identical-by-descent-for-linkage-studies-confirmation-of-a-locus-for-osteogenesis-imperfecta/).
The readership of the articles it cites varies, but one article stands
out with [208
readers](http://www.mendeley.com/research/nextgeneration-dna-sequencing/).  
  
There are huge limitations with this app (it doesn\'t cache the Mendeley
results, so repeated use will exceed the [rate
limits](http://dev.mendeley.com/docs/rate-limiting)), it is limited to
citations in PubMed (could add support for DOIs and title searches), and
only BMC articles can be processed.  
  
What would be interesting is to extend this in other directions. For
example, if the user had a Mendeley account, it would be nice to flag
which articles the reader already had in their library (and perhaps have
the ability to add those that weren\'t to the library). To personalise
the citation readership display I\'d need to add support for OAuth,
which Mendeley uses to authorise access to user accounts.  
  
If Mendeley were to provide more social features in their API then we
could add flags indicating whether any of user\'s contacts have any of
these articles in their libraries (your decision to read a paper might
be influenced by whether a contact of yours has read it \-- think of it
as a resembling the Facebook \"Like\" button). Or we could display the
readers themselves, so you could discover people with potentially
similar interests to your own.  
  
My [twitter stream](http://twitter.com/rdmpage) has been full of
complaints about the Mendeley API --- life on the bleeding edge is not
always fun. But the API does have the potential to support some cool
applications, once it gets the kinks ironed out.


Quick note on an app I threw together using the Mendeley API that I discussed in the previous post. This app is crude, and given that the Mendeley API is rate-limited and in flux it might not work for you.  The basic idea is to embellish make the list of literature cited in an article with information that might help a reader decide whether a given citation is worth reading. One clue might be how many people on Mendeley are reading that article.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

Social citations: using Mendeley API to measure citation readership