Faculty often require that you find "peer-reviewed" articles. These may also be referred to as "scholarly" or "academic". Scholarly sources are typically dense and provide a large amount of focused, detailed information on a topic. They are articles written by professionals for professionals and usually undergo review by others in the field before publication -- the author's work is reviewed by his/her peers.
Most database search engines allow you to limit your results to peer-reviewed, or academic or scholarly articles. Be aware that this designation is applied in the database to all citations to a particular journal. Use the actual citation and abstract information to make certain that you have found an appropriate article.
