The paper focuses on the key issues Russian scientists face in the process of writing abstracts in English. The undertaken study outlines practical solutions to such challenges. The paper relies on an overview of previously published research literature on the subject, as well as classification, generalisation, descriptive research, quantitative and frequency analysis. In order to verify the obtained data, corpus analysis was used. As a result, the research reveals common difficulties of abstract writing Russian authors experience and identifies discrepancies in the available findings. The paper argues that referring to authentic lexicographic and corpus online resources can become a way to avoid and / or eliminate errors. Removing the major (linguistic) stumbling block can result in overcoming academic writing issues. In addition, the article provides a brief description of the best practices for working with such resources.