research is frequently used for almost all sorts of questions only marginally related to research, such as publishing a research paper.
In hope to reduce this misuse, I suggest to rename it to researching, which has the advantage of excluding the product of research, but still includes performing research, which the tag is about. This should happen without synonymising research, because the change would be pointless otherwise.
The problem with researching is that it uses a word form that is rarely used in standard American English. (That is, not many people would say "I am researching. . . ." Instead, they'd likely say: "My research does X. . . " or something similar.
I agree with the need for a split tag, but perhaps research-process would convey what you're after better?
Looking at the current body of questions tagged research, it does seem like the tag needs to be split, not just renamed. Most of the questions currently tagged research are not about the research process. Most of them already have tags that classify them well, so I suggest creating synonyms starting with "research-", for all the people who believe they need to tag their questions with "research" and starts typing it into the tag input field.
I suggest (based on the types of existing questions currently tagged research):
I may be missing some, that will come up as we attempt to re-tag all the mis-tagged questions in research.
