The article seeks to compare how linguistics and engineering scholars employ research gap identification (RGI) strategies by identifying their types, analyzing their supporting linguistic resources, and calculating their frequencies. Two sets of research article introductions, one for each discipline, were collected from ten Russian journals. To investigate the corpus and explore the RGI strategies, the research used a mixed-method approach. The analysis revealed that both linguistics and engineering writers employed all four types of RGI strategies – indicating a lack of research, highlighting insufficient research, acknowledging limitations, and emphasizing contradictions – though significant differences emerged in the frequency of their use and the accompanying linguistic features. The results show that while linguists, facing a less competitive publishing landscape, feel less pressure to aggressively critique existing research, engineering authors tend to point out problems or disagreements in previous studies to show why new methods, algorithms, or models are needed. The study also identified distinct patterns in the use of linguistic resources to signal research gaps, with linguistics research demonstrating a near-equal preference for verb and noun phrases, while engineering research introductions exhibited a stronger preference for verb phrases over noun phrases. These findings highlight the profound influence of disciplinary communities on researchers’ rhetorical practices. This knowledge can be applied to improve the effectiveness of academic writing instruction across disciplines, enabling students and researchers to better understand and strategically employ RGI strategies to enhance the persuasiveness and impact of their publications.