Ad Marginem vs Mendeley

Mendeley has gone through eras. Here's where we sit relative to its current one.

Where Ad Marginem leads

• Local-first. Your library lives on your machine, full stop. Mendeley Reference Manager is cloud-tethered.
• Export-on-demand. Your data is yours, in one archive, at any time.
• No corporate lifecycle. Ad Marginem isn't a feature flag in an Elsevier roadmap.
• Open standards. Notes are markdown; citations are CSL; references are BibTeX-compatible.

Where Mendeley still wins

• Institutional accounts. Many universities pay for Mendeley as part of their library subscription.
• Long-running brand. Mendeley has been around since 2008; Ad Marginem is launching.

Migrating

Mendeley exports to BibTeX and RIS; Ad Marginem reads both. Bring your PDFs over; the annotations carry too if Mendeley exported them with the file.