The research icon

Considering that you get the pop up asking what you want to research next, you really don't need the Research icon. It's just repetitive without granting you any useful info, isn't it?

I'll rather get the icon, than the popup, or the pop up after you hit the icon, it helps better control off the game. You can choose what icon you want to open first, research, ships or planet.

just double click on the currently researching pannel in the bottom left to bring up the screen and change your current research or to browse techs

The point is, that right now when you are building in a planet that you just colonize, after you build the spaceport and fill your squares with whatever you want, if you go to the spaceport to build a ship, and in the same turn you finish a tech research, the research screen will take over and then you have to go back and try to find what planet you were doing what. If we had the icon, you can finalize whatever you are doing, go back to the icon and then open the research screen. Right now as it is the Research screen is in No. 1 hierarchy, over ruling all the other screen pop ups.