"Research" vs "research paper."

It depends on which verbs you use. These are okay:

Tommy reviewed/studied/considered Mrs Johnson's research.

But I don't think you can with the verb flip through. When you use research as a mass noun it doesn't have particular form: reviewing research means reviewing the ideas, not the sheets of paper or Word documents that convey those ideas. So if you want to talk about flipping through then the object would have to be something physical:

Tommy flipped through Mrs Johnson's research papers/folder/notes.

If it's a research paper, you say "research paper". As much research comes in the form of the research paper, you could substitute "research" if you felt like it. However, you might be reading a notebook that somebody recorded their data in; then it would be incorrect to substitute "research paper" for "research".