After the establishment of the Association of Forensic Medicine Specialists in Turkey (ATUD) in 1992; a need for an ongoing scientific publication was aroused in order to provide cooperation between the forensic specialists and the assistants, to be able to see intra- and inter-national scientific studies in forensic sciences and to share information and experiences between associated professional scientists. Aiming to share the information and experiences gained in Forensic Medicine and Forensic Sciences and to publish scientific studies in these fields, an editorial board was established by the Association of Forensic Medicine Specialists in Turkey, and the first edition of the journal was published where Prof. Serpil Salaçin was the editor-in-chief in 1996.

After publishing the first edition of the journal, a reputation was gained, and it was accepted to be indexed in TUBİTAK Turkish Medicine Index in 1997. Shortly, it was in the 43 journals out of 300 ones that were being published in Turkey in 1998 in the field of forensics and also being indexed by TUBİTAK Turkish Medicine Index and it gained a reputation for this achievement in such a short period throughout Turkey.

Later on, Prof. Şebnem Korur Fincancı took over and became the editor-in-chief in 2000. During this period, even though there were some delays in publication, the journal was being published uninterrupted. However, the country's economic and social troubles also affected the journal in such a bad way that these late delays led to the journal being taken out of the Turkish Medicine Index in 2004.

On the 12th year of the Bulletin of Legal Medicine publishing its first edition, Assoc. Prof. Nadir Arıcan became the editor-in-chief. The journal continued to hold an essential part of the scientific developments and share information flow among the fields of Forensic Medicine and Forensic Sciences as it initially aimed for, even though there were again few delays in publishing.

After the internet became widespread, studies were done to publish the journal in an online system as well and in 2007. For this reason, besides being published as hard copy, the journal is started to be published electronically on the official website of ATUD.

The journal continued its publications with the philosophy of being open-minded in sciences without ignoring past experiences and traditions by having Prof. Halis Dokgöz as the new editor-in-chief and a completely new editorial board in 2013. In order to have the latest technological opportunities, necessary steps were taken and with the decision taken by the administrative committee of ATUD, the journal reached the format it has aimed for by having its own website with an Open Journal System. The articles are started to be published both in hard copy and in electronic versions as pdf files to open up the scientific content to the public.

With "Open Journal System" it is now possible to do a variety of processes online more efficiently, which includes submitting articles, doing the reviewing process by the peer-reviewers and publishing the articles as well.

Each article is given a DOI (Digital Object Identifier), a unique numbering and access system enabling easy access to the journal contents. By this way, the journal is once again included in TUBİTAK Turkish Medicine Index, and also it is indexed in more international contents. By using DOIs, it is now possible for the journal's attributions to be visible and interpreted even more. Besides, using DOIs will make it much easier for the journal to be included in more international indexes as well in the future.

Today, the Bulletin of Legal Medicine is being accessed and attributed by scientists all over the world and by the first edition of 2015, the journal has a new view and a design now. The critical part here of enabling it to be indexed more in the international databases is that it has to be published non-stop without any delays or interruptions. It also increases the number of articles even more by making them easily accessible online for scientists.

Former ISSN: 1300-865X

English Title: The Bulletin of Legal Medicine

Turkish Title: Adli Tıp Bülteni

e-ISSN: 2149-4533