In recent years, science as a human activity has been characterized by massive changes, one of which is the advancement of the collective actor of knowledge generation. As can be seen, the vast majority of scientific investigations worldwide are increasingly conducted by research teams, rather than by individual scholars. Since the research team is a complex, self-organizing, dynamic and evolutionary system, it is characterized by multiple specific features. Therefore, research into the nature of the research team, its boundaries, internal structure and means of interaction with external systems is necessary in order to provide a decision-making platform for the sustainable development of science. In this paper, following an extensive literature review, the research team as a collective actor is analyzed using a goal-oriented approach. It is argued that the mutual understanding of a common goal by the members of a research team can be seen as an attractor that determines its evolutionary trajectory. Such an approach has the potential for assessing the productivity of contemporary science as the effect of collective activity performed by various participants in the process of knowledge generation. It is concluded that internal links in the research team are built in the form of networks.