This paper describes an analysis of research article abstracts written by Iranian and native English-speaking scholars of the field of Biological Science. The analysis is mainly focused on the genre structure (moves, steps) employed by the two groups. Throughout the course of this study, thirty published abstracts by Iranian researchers and another thirty by their native English-speaking counterparts, all appearing in established, international journals, were selected and analyzed. The model proposed by Bhatia (1994) was used as a general guideline and the steps and moves were identified and studied in both groups of abstracts. Finally, a comparison was made between the applications of the steps among the two groups. The findings show that Iranian writers tend to write abstracts in which the main focus is on the methodology and procedure, and little, if any, attention is paid to relating the findings to the outside world, or to solving a genuinely perceived problem. This seems to imply that Iranian researchers of the field of Biological Sciences are quite often driven by incentives other than those of purely academic inquisition. In the final phase of the study, interviews were carried out with Iranian researchers so as to investigate the reasons underlying such inclinations.

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