Scholarly articles are sometimes referred to as "refereed" or "peer-reviewed" because they are evaluated by other scholars or experts in the field. A scholarly article is commonly longer than a magazine article.
The clearest and most reliable indicator of a scholarly article is the presence of references or citations.
Some of our databases allow you to limit your search to scholarly articles. This is a useful feature, but it is not 100% accurate in terms of what it includes and what it excludes. You should still check to see if the article has references or citations.