Recognise research group after review of small papers (7)
I believe the answer is:
discern
'recognise' is the definition.
('discern' can be a synonym of 'recognize')
'research group after review of small papers' is the wordplay.
'research group' becomes 'cern' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'after' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'review of' shows that the letters should be reversed in order.
'small' becomes 's' (abbreviation - e.g. clothes size).
'papers' becomes 'id' (identification papers).
's'+'id'='sid'
'sid' backwards is 'dis'.
'cern' put after 'dis' is 'DISCERN'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for discern that I've seen before include "See" , "spot" , "Perceive - distinguish" , "Pick out" , "Detect" .)