Articles written from a theological or confessional standpoint within a particular faith are only included in so far as they may have some wider relevance to the study of religion. They are omitted if they contribute mainly to the internal conversation of a particular religion, rather than to its academic study. The length of summaries is restricted by the constraints of the hard-copy edition of Science of Religion. In general therefore summaries drawn from elsewhere may be abbreviated and in some cases edited. The editorial process is always indicated, and the intention is always to try to give a fair and succinct idea of the contents of an article in a limited span.
Indexes are an important feature of the hard-copy version of Science of Religion.
Each issue contains its own subject index and author index. This provides a research key to over 12,000 articles which were summarised in those volumes. Further integrated indexes will be provided in future.