Publications and collections

Publications and collections are the content we most often publish on GOV.UK

How we use publications

We use publications for:

publishing standalone government documents - they are date-stamped and usually not updated when published
white papers, strategy documents and reports

Do not create a publication:

when you should be adding an attachment to another content format
for meeting minutes (these should be attached to the correct governance page)
for videos

Writing and formatting for publications

Content should follow the GDS style guide and guidance on writing for GOV.UK:

titles should be short and user-friendly
titles should be front-loaded, with the most important words at the start of the sentence
the summary should be short (up to 160 characters) and end with a full stop
body copy should describe the publication in plain, neutral language

You should also consider if:

publication pages should be short and straightforward
users need to know if they should open the document, and if the information meets their needs
relevant keywords and phrases should be included for search and SEO purposes

HTML publications are presented on GOV.UK just like other document formats (such as PDFs) except they are created in HTML format.

How we use collections

Document collections can be used to group content together if:

there's a real user need to view that set of documents in one location
there is a need that cannot be met by another format, for example topic pages or policies

Collections function as a catalog, that helps users to explore content that must exist in one place. For example, a collection of road traffic statistics.

Collections should not be used :

to group documents that are only linked by a common theme - in this case a topic page or policy is appropriate
to group parts of a single document, instead add all the attachments to one publication page