# _Ex Machina_: Analytical platforms, Law and the Challenges of Computational Legal Science
## 3 From Digital Tools to Analytical Platforms: The Advent of Augmented Science
Some tools (Tetrascience [62] and Transcripting [63]) are used to outsource experiments, while others (Dexy [64] and GitLab [65]) are conceived to ease coding activity, and still others (Wolfram Alpha [66], Sweave [67], VisTrails [68], and Tableau [69]) allow generating and analysing data and visualising results. * _Writing_. In recent years, several tools have been developed to support paper drafting keeping in mind specific needs of researchers. Some tools such as Endnote [70], Zotero [71], and Citavi [72] allow storing, managing and sharing with colleagues bibliographies, citations and references. Others such as Authorea [73] and ShareLaTex [74] workspace are collaborative writing tools helping researchers to write papers with other people while keeping track of the activities and modification made by authors on the document. * _Publish_. A series of platform has been designed to ease the publication and the discussion of scientific papers aiming at the same time, at accelerating scientific communication and discovery. Platforms such as eLife [75], GigaScience [76], and Cureus [77] offer an alternative publishing model, allowing anyone to access published works for free according to the open access principles. Paper repositories such as ArXiv [78], allow authors to increase the exposure of their work (even if in progress) offering, at the same time, new opportunities of scientific interaction. Other tools such as Exec&Share [79] and RunMyCode [80] allow authors to connect papers with additional functionalities such as executable code. * _Research Evaluation_. An entire category of platforms, finally, deals with research evaluation both in terms of paper review and analysis of the impact of scientific publication. Tools such as PubPeer [81], Publons [82], and Academic Karma [83] are conceived to change the peer-review system by means of an open and anonymous review process bypassing journals and editors. Platforms such as Altmetric [84], PLOS Article-Level Metrics [85] and ImpactStory [86] offer a set of new tools that analyse the impact of scientific paper by other means than impact factor and citations counts. The scenario just described is constantly changing due to the continuous development of new tools. In general, we can observe a trend leading to the convergence of different features into advanced environments to carry out ever more substantial parts of the research. \"Analytical platforms\" is the technical term describing the result of such integration: suites somehow similar to IDEs--the integrated development environments used by software developers assembling different functionalities in a single workflow. It is possible to cite interesting experiences in which data-driven analytical platforms become the cornerstone of the path leading to answer complex research questions. _Foldit_[87], for example, is a large-scale collaborative gamification project involving thousands of participants aiming to shed light on the structure of proteins, a key factor to advance the understanding of protein folding and to target it with drugs. The number of different ways even a small protein can fold is astronomical because there are many degrees of freedom. Figuring out which of the many possible structures is the best is one of the hardest problems in biology today and current methods take a lot of money and time, even for computers. Foldit attempts to predict the structure of a protein by taking advantage of humans' puzzle-solving intuitions and having people play competitively to fold the best proteins. To do this, Foldit integrates the features of many of the tools cited above: data analysis visualisation, and collaboration. A similar initiative is _Galaxy Zoo_[88] a project exploiting an online platform to share astronomical data and involve volunteers in classifying galaxies according to their shape. The morphological classification of these celestial bodies is not only essential to understanding how galaxies formed but is also a tough task for pattern recognition software.