Pavlovia lost data after institutional license interruption

Online experiments
1

Hello,

I am experiencing a serious issue with data not being saved for a Pavlovia-hosted lab.js experiment.

The experiment was saving data correctly until 01 May 2026. My institution’s Pavlovia license expired on 02 May 2026. Around 04 May 2026, I assigned personal Pavlovia credits to the experiment so that it could continue running. Participants were then able to access and complete the task again, and the participation rate increased accordingly. The study ended on 15 May 2026.

However, both:

  • the GitLab repository, and

  • the Pavlovia Download results export

only contain data up to 01 May 2026. Around 20 participants completed the experiment after that date, but their data are missing.

Important details:

  • The experiment is built in lab.js and hosted on Pavlovia.

  • The experiment is linked to SONA.

  • Because of the SONA integration/design, sessions appear as aborted on Pavlovia. This was already the case before 02 May, when data were still saving correctly. So the “aborted” status does not explain the change by itself.

  • Participants after 02 May reached the SONA completion step and received completion credit.

  • After assigning credits around 04 May, participants could run the task again.

  • I tested the experiment myself recently: a Pavlovia credit was consumed, but no new data file appeared in GitLab or in the Pavlovia Download results export.

  • The missing data are not merely absent from GitLab; they are also absent from Pavlovia’s own downloaded results.

So the pattern is:

Before 02 May: same experiment, same SONA integration, “aborted” status, but data saved correctly.
After license expiration / credit transition: participants complete the task, credits may be consumed, but no result files are created.

Has anyone seen this happen after an institutional Pavlovia license expired and the project was moved to personal credits? Could this indicate that the project is launchable but not correctly authorized to record/save results? Is there any way to check whether failed result uploads or server-side session data exist?

Any suggestions on what to inspect would be appreciated, especially regarding project ownership, credit assignment, license transition, or lab.js/Pavlovia result-upload failures.

Thank you very much for your help.

2

Thanks for replying to my PM with your experiment URL. Before I ask @apitiot to investigate, please could you clarify something.

In a PsychoJS experiment, this means that the data won’t be saved unless incomplete data saving is turned on and the escape key is pressed twice. Sessions don’t show up as aborted when daisy chaining to Sona in PsychoJS, so please could you clarify why they need to be in lab,js and how the data was getting saved?

Here is a similar issue which I think was solved by improved daisy chaining.

3

Sure - first, just to be clear, I coded my experiment using lab.js, specifically the gui builder.

As I recruited psychology students for my experiment, which receive SONA credits in exchange for their participation, I had to embed a redirect in the experiment to the SONA website and, no matter how I tried, I could not make it so the experiment would be both marked as completed and the students would be correctly redirected to SONA.

Hence, I kept it this way, as despite the sessions being marked as aborted, the data still was sent to the gitlab repo thanks to the “save incomplete data function”. It is only since the date of this weird transition from licensed to unlicensed that the data stopped being recorded despite credits having been added to my account and attributed to the experiment.

4

Since I don’t know anything about lab.js, I thought that this might be a good use of AI to see whether there might be a solution out there…this forum documents the issue well, but not a workaround.

Here’s a link to three possible solutions. Do any of them make sense? Please report back here if you get any of them to work.

5

Hi,

Thank you for your answer - however, I believe the issue does not come from whether the session is marked as aborted, as everything worked well (as in, data was recorded in gitlab systematically) before the license was shut down.

Would you have any idea how I could check whether the data still exists in a backup of pavlovia, or if it has been sent to their servers but not on gitlab ?

6

I have to say that if the data isn’t downloadable from the project page, nor is visible on GitLab, then I don’t see where it would be. However, I also don’t know how the switch from license to credits might have caused the issue. I will send a message to @apitiot to see if he can add anything.

However, please let me know the URL of your study first (here of via PM).