How to format your references using the Legal Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Legal Medicine. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

[1]

P. van den Broek, Using texts in science education: cognitive processes and knowledge representation, Science 328 (2010) 453–456.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

A.L. Kirchmaier, J. Rine, DNA replication-independent silencing in S. cerevisiae, Science 291 (2001) 646–650.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

A. Falenty, T.C. Hansen, W.F. Kuhs, Formation and properties of ice XVI obtained by emptying a type sII clathrate hydrate, Nature 516 (2014) 231–233.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

K. Lee, S. Cho, S.H. Park, A.J. Heeger, C.-W. Lee, S.-H. Lee, Metallic transport in polyaniline, Nature 441 (2006) 65–68.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

[1]

P. Vicat-Blanc, S. Soudan, R. Guillier, B. Goglin, Computing Networks, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ, 2013.

An edited book

[1]

G. Dallenbach-Hellweg, Color Atlas of Histopathology of the Cervix Uteri, 2nd ed., Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

G. Csanak, D.P. Kilcrease, D.V. Fursa, I. Bray, Definition of Cross Sections for the Creation, Destruction, and Transfer of Atomic Multipole Moments by Electron Scattering: Quantum Mechanical Treatment, in: T. Fujimoto, A. Iwamae (Eds.), Plasma Polarization Spectroscopy, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2008: pp. 69–89.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Legal Medicine.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, Meet the World’s Grumpiest Frog, IFLScience (2014). https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/meet-worlds-grumpiest-frog/ (accessed October 30, 2018).

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

[1]

Government Accountability Office, Aviation Runway and Ramp Safety: Sustained Efforts to Address Leadership, Technology, and Other Challenges Needed to Reduce Accidents and Incidents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2007.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

R. Rodgers, Phylogenomic Analysis of Fundulidae Using RNA-Sequencing Data, Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois University, 2017.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

[1]

O. Kelly, The Nation; What the Rosenberg Papers Show The Surprise Final Witness, New York Times (1975) The Week In ReviewE4.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Legal Medicine
Abbreviation	Leg. Med. (Tokyo)
ISSN (print)	1344-6223
Scope	Pathology and Forensic Medicine Issues, ethics and legal aspects