There has been little empirical work on research article (RA) articles,still less on the comparison of RA abstracts across
disciplines. In this study, 150 abstracts from three
disciplines (electrical and electronics engineering, finance, and surgery) were randomly sampled for an in?depth analysis. The discourse structures and linguistic features of these abstracts were first identified and then compared in relation to discipline characteristics. It was found that the abstracts normally consisted of 5 moves such as 'research background (Move 1)' and 'announcement of the present research (Move 2)', and they largely followed a fixed order. However, there were abstracts whose moves deviated from the fixed order (e.g. Moves 1 and 2 were reversed). Significant differences in the
frequency of moves were also found in the abstracts from the three disciplines. With respect to the linguistic features, the use of modality was found to relate highly to the function of Moves, and the choice of voice/tense to both disciplines and moves. Further, the personal pronoun that frequently occurred was the first person plural and those personal pronouns that exhibited the highest frequency were found in the Finance abstracts. These findings provide important pedagogic implications for reading and writing RA abstracts.