All first-year students of the bachelors Psychology and Pedagogical Sciences are obliged to participate in scientific research for their first-year course Academic Skills Tutorial. Therefore, each student has to obtain 16 participation credits which will be granted through SONA. In general, one credit corresponds with spending half an hour as a participant in scientific research organized by members of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. When students have obtained all 16 credits, they can still participate in the experiments but will instead receive monetary compensation.

Students will also make use of the SONA system in order to carry out the research for their bachelor/master thesis. To do so, students have to request a researcher account which allows them to set up and manage a study. By using a researcher account credits can be granted to the participants.

SONA is used by researchers as a recruiting and management tool for their current studies. For all students and PhD candidates Researcher accounts will suffice. For other academic staff such as professors, a Principal Investigator account will be created by the administrators.

SONA is also used by external participants, i.e., students who are not enrolled in a programme organised by Psychology/Education and Child Studies or simply participants who are not affiliated to Leiden University. External participants can create an account themselves on the SONA website. These participants receive monetary rewards, but make use of SONA because of the time slot management and recruitment purposes. Granting monetary rewards takes place outside of SONA.