The Human Communication Science Virtual Laboratory (HCS vLab) is an eResearch project funded under the Australian Government NeCTAR program to build a platform for collaborative eResearch around data representing human communication and the tools that researchers use in their analysis. The human communication science field is broadly defined to encompass the study of language from various perspectives but also includes research on music and various other forms of human expression. This paper outlines the core architecture of the HCS vLab and in particular, highlights the web based API that provides access to data and tools to authenticated users.