This paper explores the extent of rhetorical variation between English research article abstracts, written for international journals, and Spanish research article abstracts, published in Spanish journals, in the domain of experimental social sciences. The findings demonstrate that the Spanish abstracts largely follow the international conventions based on the norms established by the English-speaking international academic community, whilst some degree of divergence is found in the abstract introductions and in the frequency of occurrence of the results unit. The rhetorical variables found across the two languages may be accounted for by the different expectations of the members of the international and Spanish scientific communities.