Reproduction Materials

This repository contains the code and data required to reproduce analyses and figures presented in:

Ramirez-Ruiz, Sebastian, and Roman Senninger. "Government policy documents across 185 countries largely cite Global North sources." Nature Human Behaviour (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02464-x

Structure

The project is organized into the following directories and files:

├── code/
│   ├── 01-main.R                         # Main script: runs all analyses in order
│   ├── helpers.R                         # Helper functions (e.g., for generating maps)
│   └── packages.R                        # Loads and installs required R packages
│
├── data/
│   ├── document_summary_df.RDS                       # Summary data by country (counts & logs of documents)
│   ├── policy_documents_distribution_df.RDS          # Distribution of policy documents
│   ├── developed_citation_distribution_df.RDS        # Citation distribution by development status
│   ├── flag_codes.RDS                                # Country flag codes for plotting
│   ├── h_index_df.RDS                                # H-index data for countries or institutions
│   ├── references_to_scholars_countries_df.RDS       # Country-level references to scholars
│   ├── dyads_foreign_gvt_df.RDS                      # Foreign government reference dyads
│   ├── dyads_scholarly_df.RDS                        # Scholarly reference dyads
│   ├── long_docs_df.RDS                              # Individual policy document data
│   └── scholarly_documents_distribution_df.RDS       # Distribution of scholarly documents
│
├── figures/                                          # Output directory for all generated figures
│
├── output/                                           # Directory for additional output files
│   ├── avg_predictions.RData                         # Predictions using the full estimation sample
│
├── ramirezruiz_senninger_policy_docs_nhb_si_appendix.pdf  # SI Appendix
│
└── reproduction-materials.Rproj                      # RStudio project file

Instructions

1. Open the RStudio Project
   Open reproduction-materials.Rproj to ensure relative paths work properly.

2. Install Dependencies and Run Analyses
   Execute code/01-main.R to run all analysis scripts and generate figures. This script sources all necessary files and processes the data step by step. It will automatically run code/packages.R to install and load all required R packages.

Notes

• All .RDS files in the data/ directory are pre-processed and ready for use.
• Figures will be saved in the figures/ directory after running the main script.
• If using a fresh R installation, ensure that R version ≥ 4.2.2 is used.