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Item Open Access Advancing legal education: integrating space law into postgraduate curricula in international governance and commercial law(School of Law Queen's University of Belfast, 2025-12-31)Space law, in its current form, is still largely rooted in Cold War-era assumptions, and yet the realities of space activity today could hardly be more different. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty remains the primary legal scaffold, but its focus on state actors leaves considerable ambiguity where commercial and non-state activities are concerned. That gap has become increasingly problematic as private ventures, from small satellite constellations to lunar mining initiatives, have reshaped the landscape. This paper makes the case for integrating space law as a distinct and serious component of postgraduate legal curricula, particularly in courses concerned with international governance and commercial regulation. Without this shift, it is difficult to see how future legal practitioners will be prepared to respond to the growing regulatory complexities in this field. Through examining recent developments and legal trends, this paper highlights why and how legal education should adapt, while exploring the institutional and pedagogical challenges such integration might raise.Item Open Access Safety, efficacy, and potential clinical application of nivasorexant, a novel orexin receptor antagonist, in psychiatry: A systematic review(Wolters Kluwer - Medknow, 2026-02-12)Orexin A and orexin B are neuropeptides that play an important role in regulating physiological functions such as stress response, reward, energy, and arousal. Orexin receptor antagonists (ORAs), such as nivasorexant, are a new class of medications targeting the orexin system. Nivasorexant is a selective orexin-1 receptor antagonist (OX1R) that was developed to avoid dual receptor antagonists. We aimed to conduct this systematic review to evaluate the safety and efficacy of nivasorexant and to explore the potential clinical uses in psychiatry. Relevant databases were searched to identify studies focused on nivasorexant’s pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, safety, efficacy, and clinical uses in humans. Out of 34 articles identified, five articles were included. Preclinical evidence suggested a promising role for nivasorexant in modulating compulsive behaviors due to its high selectivity for OX1R and lack of significant sedation. Clinical investigations have provided insights into its pharmacokinetic profile and generally favorable safety. While initial efficacy findings for a specific psychiatric indication were not definitively met, exploratory analyses suggest that patient characteristics might influence treatment outcomes. Furthermore, nivasorexant’s metabolic profile indicates potential for drug interactions, requiring careful consideration in clinical practice. Nivasorexant’s potential for addressing disorders is characterized by dysregulated reward processing, where maintaining alertness is desirable, based on its selective mechanism and tolerability. However, this review is limited by the current volume of clinical data, the scope of studies conducted, and the generalizability of findings across diverse patient populations. Further rigorous clinical validation is needed to fully ascertain its therapeutic potential and optimal application in psychiatry.Item Open Access The development and drivers of the impact advantages of open access research(University of Wolverhampton, 2026)Introduction: The tendency for Open Access (OA) research to attract more citations and online attention than non-OA research is widely referred to as the Open Access Advantage (OAA). While numerous hypotheses attempt to explain this phenomenon, existing research lacks comprehensive analyses of how OAAs have evolved, differ by OA type and journal status, and how they change over time. A lack of consistent methodologies, overly narrow studies and lack of longitudinal research hampers understanding. This thesis addresses these gaps and attempts to understand the underlying phenomena. Methods: Using a dataset of approximately 45M journal articles published between 2010–23, the study examines OAAs across multiple metrics. These include journal citations, and six altmetric data sources, being citations from patents, Wikipedia, policy documents, and mentions on Twitter, in news, and in blogs. Analyses are segmented by publication year, time since publication, discipline, OA type, and journal status. Metrics are presented and analysed by proportions and means, the Open Access Advantages as OA:non-OA ratios. Results: Findings reveal that while OAAs are present for most metrics, they are highly variable: the scale of OAAs are not universal. Differences emerge between metrics, showing distinct patterns: medical and life science OA citation rates are 1.25–2× higher; engineering, technology and maths OA papers are approximately 3× more likely to be covered by blogs; OA research gets approximately 3× the volume of attention on Twitter. Citation-based OAAs tend to decline in recent years, with the citation means advantage disappearing for the social sciences and technical–mathematical fields. Open Access research is between 1.2–1.5× more likely to be cited in the year of publication, an effect that drops slightly in the second year, before recovering in subsequent years, growing its advantage. OA research is more likely to be featured in news and blog sources by a factor of over 2, although this benefit is not universal. OAAs are generally stronger for higher-status journals, often changing as articles age. Green OA – the least common form – tends to outperform Gold OA. Disciplinary variation is significant: medical and life sciences show accelerated levels of impact associated with OA adoption, humanities mirror this trend, while social sciences diverge. Conclusion: OAAs are not a single phenomenon, no single explanation can be used to understand them. These mechanisms appear to change over time, as OA is adopted by different disciplines. The presence of significant OAAs for the year of publication, suggest that early access is a significant driver of OAAs, although the persistence of these phenomena suggest other mechanisms, mostly likely being a form of ‘rich get richer’ effect related to the visibility and discoverability of OA. Increased rates of OA research impact different stakeholder groups in different ways, public interest and social impact, and individual disciplines show significant differences in how impactful their move towards OA has been. OA may accelerate research and impact in some fields. The benefits of Open Access publishing can not be assumed to apply universally: these findings have implications for funders, academics, publishers and research evaluators.Item Open Access A study of disputes and their resolution in public private partnership (PPP) projects in Nigeria(University of Wolverhampton, 2026)The Construction industry is the largest contributor to the world economy given the GDP ratio. But infrastructure construction is a complex process, requires coordinated efforts of a temporarily assembled multiple-member organisation of many discrete groups, each having different goals and needs, and each expecting to maximise its own benefits. Nigeria shifted the burden of new infrastructure development and investment to the private sector as part of the Public Partnership (PPP) policy, as an effort to fill the gap in infrastructure developments and to achieve its vision 20:2020 The study, therefore, investigated disputes, dispute resolution methods and the procedures parties to PPP infrastructure construction disputes employed to address such disputes. The study adopted a systematic review process as a methodological approach to review the existing literature on construction disputes and their resolution methods. The study also carried out a literature review of Nigeria’s major construction projects and related disputes and their resolution methods with a view to developing strategies for the efficient and effective dispute resolution methods. Adopting a non-probability with purposive sampling and snowballing strategy, the research draws on in-depth semi-structured interviews with PPP construction professionals, government officials, private concessionaires, and ADR practitioners. The qualitative design enables an interpretive exploration of lived experiences, practitioner narratives, and the contextual factors influencing dispute trajectories. Findings reveal that disputes in Nigerian PPPs primarily arise from unclear initial specifications and frequent design modifications, ambiguous risk allocation, inconsistent government commitments, financial uncertainties resulting in time and payment delays, political interference. The study also revealed from participants’ emphasises that despite the presence of formal tiered dispute resolution clauses, early ADR mechanisms such as negotiation and mediation are often underutilised due to mistrust, power asymmetries, and unclear triggers for when a dispute is deemed to have formally crystallised. These gaps contribute to premature escalation to arbitration or litigation, increasing costs and delaying project delivery. The study has contributed to theory by advancing that dispute behaviour in PPP projects in Nigeria is shaped by the interaction of contractual incompleteness and political interference complexity, factors not fully accounted for in existing PPP or dispute-systems theories. To deal with the challenges and achieve efficient and effective dispute resolutions processes in PPP projects in Nigeria, three sets of remedial strategies were proposed. But a set aligns with underlying philosophy of ‘prevention is better than cure’ and was integrated into a single framework called Remedial Strategy Pathways The research findings have policy, legal and geographical implications. The finding called for policy changes to focus more on ensuring widely used standard form of contract contains provision for on-site prevention and avoidance strategies. On legal implication, the finding imply a need for reforms in areas of improved education, training and enforcement of contract requirements. The findings have implications for other developing countries. The dispute resolution methods of ADR should encompass only non-binding processes where parties retain ultimate control over the resolution process and outcome of their disputes.Item Open Access A study on the indoor environment quality: its impact on occupants’ productivity of university library (Wolverhampton University libraries as an example)(University of Wolverhampton, 2026)Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) determines occupant comfort, health, and productivity within built environments. As essential academic spaces, university libraries enhance student learning, research, and overall academic performance. While previous studies have primarily examined the health and comfort aspects of IEQ, there has been limited research on its direct impact on occupant productivity, especially in university libraries. This study examines the relationship between IEQ factors, including air quality, thermal comfort, visual comfort, and acoustics comfort, and productivity in university library settings. A mixed-methods research approach will be employed, combining quantitative assessments through environmental monitoring and occupant surveys with qualitative insights from interviews and focus group discussions. Data will be analysed using statistical tools to identify correlations between IEQ parameters and productivity levels. Additionally, the findings will be compared against international comfort and environmental standards to pinpoint gaps and areas for improvement. This research will provide empirical evidence on how IEQ influences productivity in university libraries, offering valuable insights for facility managers, architects, and higher education policymakers. The outcomes of this study will inform strategies to optimise library environments, enhance academic experiences, and ensure sustainable, high-performance learning spaces.
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