Release notes
New features for researchers and for participants, month by month. Bug fixes and maintenance work are not listed.
For researchersFor participantsMilestoneSelect a bar to open that month
102 features in 8 months, plus the launch
1 feature#
Features added in November up to now. This list grows during the month.
This page lists the features each month added, for researchers and for participants, and the participant app's footer links to its participant view.
29 features#
Teaching tools, multi-team projects, a study archive with public record pages, and video tutorials.
The Between-Subjects Branching component can route participants by their landing-page slot, so each slot code or slot value leads to its own task.
Invitees can decline a project invitation from the project card, the project dashboard or the email link.
A project can have several analysis teams or data-collection sites; each team sees only its own tasks and files and gets its own study link.
The Japanese interface extends to the dashboard home, sidebar, tasks, account settings and collaboration pages, and to the login and sign-up pages.
Tasks exported from the lab.js builder are saved on arrival, and the task page offers Create a study with this task.
12 features#
Task file revisions, fixed-slot group assignment, participant account deletion and a Japanese researcher interface.
The Data Quality Centre's Testing phase (before a date) rule excludes participants who started before a chosen date from quality statistics and the study dashboard.
The Participants table has an optional Restarts column, the Data Overview filters restarted sessions, and exports carry Session ID, Run and Of Runs columns.
A Between-Subjects Branching component can route participants by a parameter in their study link, matching its presence or value, with a fallback for unmatched participants.
Participants can delete their account from a Privacy & data page and choose whether their study data is deleted or stays with the researchers.
Participants can sign in to the participant app with their email address as well as their username.
5 features#
Study-link parameters inside lab.js tasks, a condition picker in Try demo, and completion URLs in Redirect.
Parameters in a study link are passed into lab.js tasks, where scripts and screens read them as this.parameters.NAME or ${parameters.NAME}.
In Try demo, a menu for each between-subjects branch and for group codes selects one condition, and tasks receive openlab_condition as in a real session.
The Redirect component accepts a recruitment provider's completion URL pasted whole, and sends each parameter in it as given or replaced with a session value.
Documented lab.js paradigms that can be copied into a study and run as they are, or adapted.
When a lab.js task's data still cannot be submitted after automatic retries, participants see a notice with Try again and Continue without saving.
4 features#
Automatic test runs of lab.js tasks, AI screening tasks, and ten new paradigms in the Task Library.
A Test run button in the Study Builder and on each task's page plays a lab.js task automatically and reports errors, dead-end screens and missing data.
Include all and Exclude all buttons in a study's Data view mark every session in the current filter, on all pages, for analysis and downloads.
The Task Library has a Data Quality & AI Screening category of tasks that detect AI agents, linked from the Bot Detection tab of the Data Quality Centre.
Documented lab.js paradigms that can be copied into a study and run as they are, or adapted.
6 features#
Account-key encryption with a recoverable vault, participant payments, and box mode for lab sessions.
Group-code and branching balance can count everyone who started the study or only participants with a completed dataset.
Researchers can download a JSON copy of their account data from Settings.
Studies can encrypt data to the researcher's account key, held in an encryption vault with a recovery code, and share access with collaborators.
Researchers fund a wallet, set a reward per participant, approve it or send a bonus, and participants request a payout from the Wallet tab of the participant app.
Box mode runs a study on one shared device in the lab: each session counts as a new anonymous participant, and the ending screen offers Start next participant.
The Dataset details window in a study's Data view has a Download CSV button for the trial events of that one dataset.
12 features#
The Data Explorer with Python and R notebooks, the Task Library, tracking links and a study templates gallery.
The Data Explorer loads trial data from one or more studies into the browser for SQL queries and a visual builder that draws charts.
Notebooks in the Data Explorer run Python or R in the browser, with SQL and Markdown cells, on the loaded study data.
A Community forum lets researchers post topics in categories, reply, react and search, with notifications for replies.
The Task Library at /library lists ready-made lab.js paradigms to preview, add to My Tasks or add to a study from the Study Builder.
A task's analysis setup defines trial rows, variables and summary or contrast metrics, which each study's Data view computes per participant.
19 features#
Project workspaces, group codes in lab.js tasks, task parameters per study, more export formats and a Data Quality page.
Each project opens a workspace with tasks by research phase, milestones, a calendar, files, linked studies, team and activity, with due-date notifications.
A project's Writing tab holds shared documents with citations and a bibliography, drawn from a References list with DOI lookup and BibTeX export.
An Ending page can show each participant a completion code, optionally after a minimum number of runs or hours, and studies can allow repeat participation.
Each study has an inbox where the study team and participants with an Open Lab account exchange messages.
Participants with an account have a dashboard with their studies, invitations, messages, notifications and profile.
14 features#
The new Open Lab opened as a public beta for building lab.js studies, recruiting participants and collecting data.
The Study Builder arranges a study flow of landing page, informed consent, lab.js tasks, redirects to external sites and an ending page.
Docs: Study builderVideo: Your first study: from task to data
A Between-Subjects Branching component sends each participant down one randomly chosen branch of the study flow.
The landing page assigns participant and group codes by a set value, probability, time window or participant entry, and a Redirect step can forward them.
lab.js tasks reach My Tasks by direct export from the lab.js builder or by JSON upload, and each task can be previewed before use.
A study can be saved as a public or private template, and templates can be browsed and used to start new studies.