Building a New Scotland series website downloads: FOI release

Information requested

Please provide the most recent available data on the number of views, downloads, and any public responses for each individual publication in the Building a New Scotland independence prospectus series.

This is a follow-up to FOI-202400402847, but I am requesting the latest available figures for all published papers in the series (including any published after the date of that FOI), broken down by individual title.

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. We have interpreted your request for “any public responses for each individual publication in the Building a New Scotland independence prospectus series” to mean external commentary from members of the public via platforms such as social media. The Scottish Government has no business need to hold or retain such information as it is freely available in the public domain. This is a formal notice under Section 17 of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested.

For context, publications on gov.scot exist as both PDFs and multi-page HTML documents. To provide the most accurate figures possible, we have interpreted 'number of downloads' as the number of users who accessed the papers by viewing the HTML pages or downloading the PDFs. "Unique users" refers to the total number of unique individuals who visited the reported pages of the website during the time period analysed.

Website analytics data is not 100% accurate for a number of reasons: including where users have opted out or blocked tracking. Additionally, some data is only retained for a maximum of 13 months. Gov.scot implemented new cookie banner settings as of the start of September 2024. Previously all users were opted-in to analytics tracking by default (and could opt out); now the default is that all users must choose if they want to opt in or not. This caused a drop in traffic available in the dashboard which has been calculated to be 39% of the total site usage.

Figures up to 25 March 2024 can be found in the following FOI (of which this is a follow up). These figures predated the Cookie changes in September 2024: Building a New Scotland series website downloads: FOI release - gov.scot

As of 17 July 2025:

Number of unique visitors that have visited Paper 1 (summary and main paper) since 26 March 2024:

Full version: 1,106

Summary: 686

Number of unique visitors that have visited Paper 2 (summary and main paper) since 26 March 2024:

Full version: 2,195

Summary: 314

Number of unique visitors that have visited Paper 3 (summary and main paper) since 26 March 2024:

Full version: 3,688

Summary: 1,683

Number of unique visitors that have visited Paper 4 (summary and main paper) since 26 March 2024:

Full version: 1,154

Summary: 366

From Paper 5 onwards, the summary is not a separate document, but a section of the main paper. Therefore, rather than separate figures - we have just recorded unique visitors for the full version as a whole.

Number of unique visitors that have visited Paper 5 since 26 March 2024:

Full version: 11,560

Number of unique visitors that have visited Paper 6 since 26 March 2024:

Full version: 6,622

Number of unique visitors that have visited Paper 7 since 26 March 2024:

Full version: 5,858

Number of unique visitors that have visited Paper 8 since 26 March 2024:

Full version: 403

Number of unique visitors that have visited Paper 9 since 26 March 2024:

Full version: 1,843

Number of unique visitors that have visited Paper 10 since 26 March 2024:

Full version: 1,186

Number of unique visitors that have visited Paper 11 since 26 March 2024:

Full version: 4,306

Number of unique visitors that have visited Paper 12 since its launch on 25 March 2024:

Full version: 3,073

Number of unique visitors that have visited Paper 13 since its launch on 25 April 2024:

Full version: 2,351

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.