A research grade telescope will not use a main mirror that is distorted by its supporting cell. If there are any support induced distortions, then a research grade telescope will have calibration software that will compensate for the known distortions when capturing its images.  This brings us to the next property of a research grade telescope: Instrumentation.
Instrumentation gives the telescope "Adaptive Optics" enabling the telescope to capture jitter free images of the heavens from the ground, - breaking the "Seeing" limitation that prevents non-adaptive optical systems from resolving details that subtend less than 3 seconds of arc. Instrumentation allows spectroscopic analysis of the light coming from a star or a distant nebula. From this we can get an idea of an object's chemical composition, temperature, radial velocities etc. A telescope without instrumentation is little more than an expensive toy.
A Research Grade telescope must accommodate a CCD Camera, a Colour Filter Wheel, and a Spectroscope as a minimal instrument package. These instruments should be mountable at both the prime focus and on the telescope's focusing mount. Few commercial telescopes posses focusers capable of supporting the weight of all these instruments at once. A research grade telescope will have a focuser that can handle this much weight and more.  Furthermore the telescope's "back focus" must be long enough to reach the CCD cell after passing through both the spectroscope and colour filter wheel. The location and size of a research grade telescope's Secondary Mirror will be optimized to provide this much back focus with a measure of play. Today's research grade telescopes are fully computerized being remotely controlled by a computer in an environment more favorable to the astronomer.