The use of evaluative that clauses is a key linguistic feature in academic writing, reflecting authors’ stance and epistemic positioning. While prior studies have examined disciplinary variations in their usage, limited research has focused on nursing research, particularly in English abstracts written by researchers publishing in Japanese nursing journals. This study investigates differences in evaluative that clause usage between abstracts from international high impact factor nursing journals and those from leading Japanese nursing journals. A corpus of 200 nursing research abstracts (100 international, 100 Japanese) was analyzed using the framework of Hyland and Jiang (2018), classifying instances based on evaluated entity, evaluative stance, source, and expression. Statistical analysis using χ2 tests revealed significant differences in the evaluated entity and evaluative source categories. International abstracts exhibited greater engagement with prior research and a preference for abstract entity-based evaluations, while Japanese abstracts predominantly relied on self-evaluation and concealed sources. These findings suggest that authors published in Japanese nursing journals adopt a more self-referential and certainty-driven evaluative style, which may reflect linguistic and academic conventions in Japan. This study highlights the need for further research on disciplinary and linguistic factors shaping evaluative practices in EFL academic writing and offers insights for improving EFL academic writing instruction in nursing research.
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