Abstract：Abstract: Previous research in academic discourse has revealed that abstracts have promotional functions. However, little attention has been given to the similarities and differences in promotional features in data-based research article English abstracts published by Chinese and international linguistic journals. To address this problem, we employed a corpus facilitated Genre Analysis method，compared 1251 RAs in the perspective of information salience in order to examine the promotional features in English abstracts published by Chinese journals and problems possibly existed. Results show that in the aspect of richness of information, international RA abstracts with more than 3 moves is 2.4 times higher than the Chinese counterparts, and significant difference falls on moves of STR and DTM. In terms of features of information salience, move sequencing and move length vary significantly between the two types of journals. These differences obviously result in low degree of promotional power of the abstracts. The findings of this research, hopefully, may help Chinese journal writers to see the importance of promotional functions of abstracts from the perspective of academic communication. Key words: promotional feature; move; corpus; genre structure; information salience
