Intuitively, I'd say this way from unstructured to structure that is added later basically also applies to research in the arts, creating a paper, at least for me. (I have no experience in scientific research though.) - Maitani

Unstructured to structured happens all the time for me, but most of my tools are one or the other, and don't help me with the transition :( - Amit Patel

Sounds very much like evolution of wiki threads. They start off in threaded mode and then after a while someone refactors into document mode. If you had to start with document mode I doubt we we get the same level of quality content. That transition is a process of thought, so I'm not sure a tool could help much. - Todd Hoff