CurTask vs Mendeley: one project for reading, analysing and writing your review

This page is for researchers who use Mendeley to store and read PDFs and are looking for a tool that also takes them through the analysis and the writing of a literature review. Mendeley is widely used as a free reference manager with a desktop app, a web version, PDF annotation, group libraries and a citation plugin for Word, and it now offers AI features for reading and questioning your papers. CurTask is built around the whole review: papers, evidence, codes, themes and draft in one project.

At a glance

From storing papers to using them

Mendeley keeps your PDFs organised and lets you read and annotate them. CurTask treats the library as the first of three lenses. Library is where you collect and read; Analysis is where you extract, code and synthesise; Writing is where the review takes shape. Every project draws its papers from one Global Library, so a paper is stored once and its analyses travel with it into every project that uses it. Reusing an analysis you already have costs 0 credits.

A paper without a PDF still belongs in your library. CurTask saves it with its details, marks it "No PDF", and lets you add the PDF later from the paper's drawer; the AI analyses only papers that have their PDF, so the others cost nothing. And whatever you build stays yours: on every plan, "Download all my data" gives you one ZIP in open formats, with your files as uploaded, your notes and manuscripts as Markdown and Word, and your references as BibTeX, RIS and CSL-JSON.

A matrix you can check cell by cell

A literature review often needs a table: sample, method, setting, findings, limitations. In CurTask you add a column by describing it in plain words, see the credit estimate, and let the AI fill it for every paper in the project. Each value keeps its page number and a verbatim quote that was checked against that page. If the paper does not support a value, the cell says "No source found" instead of offering a guess. Nothing becomes your work until you accept it: AI values stay marked Suggested until you accept, edit or restore them. When you need the table elsewhere, export it to CSV.

Qualitative analysis of the literature, built in

For thematic or integrative reviews, CurTask has a coding workspace. Select a passage, apply a code, and a coloured strip appears beside the text. Your codebook keeps colours easy to tell apart, and you can write memos on coded passages. Coding by hand is on every plan; on paid plans the AI codes every paper of a project at the push of a button, and you accept or dismiss each suggestion. The Synthesis Map then lets you group codes into themes (or, on paid plans, have the AI sort them into categories and themes), mark which papers agree, contradict or extend each other, and send a theme to your draft with its passages attached.

Writing beside your sources

CurTask's Writing lens is a modular editor with binder, corkboard and outline views. Cite with @ in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, Nature, AMA or ACS and the bibliography is rebuilt when you change style. A citation can carry its page, and the evidence line takes you straight back to the passage in the PDF. Optional marks show the sentences that have no citation yet. The writing sidebar builds on the analysis you have accepted and shows what contradicts or supports the paragraph you are writing, in up to three cards with contradictions first, each with its page and verified quote. Compile to Word, PDF, Markdown or HTML when you are done.

Private, local and priced in ringgit

Your papers, notes and writing are stored in Malaysia, visible only to you, and never used to train AI. Scanned PDFs are read in English and Malay with their full text kept. The interface is in English and Bahasa Melayu, and plans are in ringgit, including a Student plan for university students. Every AI action shows its cost first, and a job your balance can't cover simply doesn't start.

When Mendeley might suit you

If you mainly need a free reference manager with PDF reading, group libraries and a Word citation plugin, and like asking AI questions about the papers in your library, Mendeley is a familiar choice in many universities.

Using both

You can keep Mendeley as your reference store and move a review into CurTask when you start analysing. Drag the PDFs into CurTask: duplicates are recognised, and each paper's details are filled from its DOI for you to check. CurTask does not import Mendeley libraries or RIS/BibTeX files, so bring the PDFs themselves. A Save to CurTask browser extension for Chrome, Edge and Brave is coming soon; until it arrives, Mendeley Web Importer stays the quicker way to collect papers from the web.

Start a project on CurTask's free plan and see your matrix fill with evidence you can check.