Research information management (RIM) is a rapidly growing area of investment in US research universities. RIM systems that support the collection and use of research outputs metadata have been in place for many years. Globally, the RIM ecosystem is quite mature in locales where national research assessment exercises like the United Kingdom's Research Excellence Framework (REF) and the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) require institutions to collect and report on the outputs of institutional research. A pan-European community of practice is led by euroCRIS. However, in the absence of national research assessment requirements in the United States, RIM practices at U.S. research universities have taken a different--and characteristically decentralized--course. A complex variety of stakeholders have responded to a similarly complex mix of use cases, with silos and frequent duplication as a result. This report is a two-part series that provides a first-of-its-kind documentation of RIM practices at US research universities, building on previous research conducted by OCLC Research, that offers a thorough examination of RIM practices, goals, stakeholders, and system components. Part One provides summary findings synthesized from in-depth case studies of US RIM practices, which are documented in detail in the Part Two companion report. It furthermore synthesizes these findings into a summary of RIM use cases, a RIM system framework, and concise recommendations for RIM stakeholders. [For Part Two, see ED623603.]