Mendeley Readership Analysis

Mendeley readership analysis uses the number of users who have saved an article to their personal library in the Mendeley reference manager as an indicator of scholarly attention. Ehsan Mohammadi and Mike Thelwall showed in 2014 that these reader counts have broad coverage, correlate moderately with later citations, and, because saving precedes citing, become available much earlier than citation data. Mendeley also exposes coarse demographic categories for its readers, such as students, researchers, and professionals, allowing analysis of who is engaging with research, including non-citing audiences in the social sciences and humanities. As one of the most studied altmetric sources, Mendeley readership offers an early and relatively well-covered signal that complements citations, while raising distinct questions about what saving a paper actually means.