writing an academic article requires the researchers to provide support for their works by learning how to cite the works of others. various studies regarding the analysis of citation in m.a theses have been done, while little work has been done on comparison of citations among elt scopus journal articles, and so the dearth of research in this area demands for further investigation into citations in articles. to aim this, the researcher of the present study compares the use of citations between 60 iranian and international elt sopus journal articles. citation frameworks are petric (2007) and thompson and tribble (2001). each framework is further divided into sub-categories and whole sections of articles are analyzed in terms of citation based on the frameworks mentioned earlier. the findings show that iranian researchers unlike the international ones tend to use integral more than non-integral citations according to thomspson and tribble’s (2001) framework, indicating that they emphasize the writers rather than information. the analysis of citations based on petric’s (2007) framework demonstrates that the use of citation for non-attribution functions is found to be considerably lower in iranian articles than in international articles, both in the whole articles and in individual sections. the data also reveal that there is a relationship between articles’ sections and type of citations use. in conclusion, the study argues that functions of citations should receive more attention in elt courses in order to raise the awareness of researchers and avoid the practice of plagiarism.