In recent years, there has been a growing interest in academia in the documentation and measurement of religious freedom, leading to the development of an increasingly rich corpus of religious freedom monitoring instruments, ranging from qualitative monographs and narrative reports to surveys and quantitative tools. As a parallel development, more and more national governments, as well as supranational bodies, have taken interest in the issue of religious freedom, developing their own documentation tools and, in some cases, appointing specialized officers to promote religious freedom in foreign or domestic policy. Notwithstanding these developments, there is little consensus about the conceptualization and operationalization of religious freedom, as well as about the proper methodology to measure it. Moreover, it is unclear what the effectiveness of religious freedom research has been to combat religious freedom violations. This special issue of the IJRF discusses the impact of religious freedom research on any of the following three research domains:

1. On academia: What are the main foci of religious freedom research today? In which ways is religious freedom conceptualized and measured? To what extent has this research influenced broader academic research?
2. On policy: To what extent has religious freedom research informed policy initiatives to promote religious freedom? Has it made an effective contribution to combat religious freedom violations?
3. On vulnerable religious groups: Are there ways in which religious freedom research has made or is making a difference for religious minorities themselves? How could religious freedom research increase the resilience of religious groups to persecution?