Mendeley ‘the Last.fm of Research’ Hits New Heights

UK based Mendeley Research are on course to become the biggest online research paper database by passing both the 100,000 user and 8 million paper uploads mark.

Mendeley presented at the 2009 Next Web Conference earlier this year and Dr Werner Vogels, chief technology officer at Amazon believes voiced his acclaim of the service “I strongly believe that Mendeley can change the face of science.”.

The service allows scientists and researchers to organise and store papers within the cloud and provides the tools for them to not only discover and download some of the 25,000 currently on offer for free but to connect and colloborate too.  By incorporating the same fundamentals which saw the web 2.0 era develop through collaboration, Mendeley have used this to birth ‘science 2.0’.

Co-founder and director Jan Reichelt believes  ‘putting openness, sharing and collaboration at the heart of research.’ is at the heart of the companies success and are on track to become the largest online research network in Spring 2010.

It appears Mendeley have breathed new life into the way scientists undertake research and the information they now have access to will only enhance the productiveness of their work.  With the database doubling in size every 10 weeks, it’s a clear sign of the value the network is indeed providing scientists by allowing them to connect and collaborate with others.

With an accomplished desktop and web app available, it’s solid foundations and growth provide an excellent footing for further development with $2m of investment secured earlier this year.

The aforementioned foundations leave definite scope for Mendeley to port itself into other markets with large corporations surely taking note at the opportunity to harvest it’s employees knowledge and work.

40% month on month growth of users, whilst still being in beta is another mouthwatering figure that will surely see Mendeley become a growing force on the collaboration landscape.