About DataPipe

DataPipe is free to use.

The expensive parts of running an online experiment — hosting files and storing data — are handled by services you already have access to: GitHub Pages for hosting, and Google Drive, Dataverse, or Zenodo for storage. DataPipe is a lightweight bridge between them, which makes it inexpensive to operate.

DataPipe is hosted on Google Firebase. Current resource consumption is less than $1 per month. The jsPsych Open Collective account has funding reserves to sustain the service, and we keep costs and available funds public so you can judge the service's long-term viability. A donation of a few dollars covers roughly the lifetime cost of providing DataPipe to one researcher.

There are a few risks to be aware of:

1. Authorization tokens. DataPipe needs permission to write to your storage account, and all tokens are stored encrypted. For Google Drive and Zenodo you authorize DataPipe directly, and it manages and refreshes those tokens for you. For Dataverse you supply an API token, so create one specifically for DataPipe and revoke it when you are done collecting data. You can disconnect any provider from your account settings at any time.
2. Fake or spam data. As with any online experiment, a technically savvy user could submit fabricated data or spam files to your storage. DataPipe provides validation rules and session limits to reduce this risk.
3. Support availability. DataPipe is not a commercial product, and has no dedicated support team — the developers of jsPsych maintain it and answer what they can. The source code is open and thoroughly tested, and the service runs on Google Cloud infrastructure.

If you have a question or a problem, first check the GitHub repository issues to see whether it has already been answered. If not, post a new issue there. If you need to reach the developers directly, the contact page has an email address.

If what you need is the reference for the DataPipe paper, that moved to Citing DataPipe.