Late last year, I reviewed Mendeley, the platform-agnostic research management tool that lets you organize and share your references. Since Mendeley is cloud-based, its users have created the "world's largest crowdsourced research database," and today it's launching a competition, the Mendeley API Binary Battle.

Mendeley wants you to build an application with the 70 million documents, usage stats, tags and so on that comprise their database, and the winner gets $10,001, with a runner-up prize of $1,000 and a Parrot quadrocopter drone. Tim O'Reilly (of O'Reilly Media) and Amazon CTO Werner Vogels are part of the judging team, and you've got until August 31, 2011 to submit your entry.

Apps will be judged on the following criteria: API key usage, whether or not it goes viral, how much the app contributes to collaboration and transparency, and general coolness. You can sign up at the Mendeley site to get an API key today.