Every day, thousands of employed professional researchers join Mendeley, from places like Stanford, Harvard, and MIT. Researchers join Mendeley because the tool Mendeley provides is useful for a practicing researcher and they become part of the network because Mendeley makes it easy to collaborate and share with colleagues they already know. They’re not just random people joining a network for the sake of networking.

Also, the institutional deals that Mendeley has put in place with universities (Stanford signed on for three years) means that Mendeley has a proven revenue model which means it will A) be around after the venture capital runs out B) not need to try to monetize with intrusive methods