Personally, I don't consider that to be satisfactory.
It's a word. If you want to coin a new word which refers to whatever you are thinking of as something that 'establish{es} standards for research' you are welcome to (it sounds like a 'protocol' to me, but I expect there are more notions you are thinking of that you haven't described here). But the word 'theory' has been used in this way for longer than either of us have been alive - I'm at a loss as to how a word can be satisfactory or otherwise, but it doesn't seem an important point either way.