A scholarly article should include research findings, statistics, a bibliography or references. It should be written by experts in a particular subject. General interest titles are usually not written by subject experts. Most scholarly journals have an editorial board comprised of individuals in the subject area who determine which articles to accept for publication. An abstract is a summary of the article.
Most scholarly articles have an abstract at the beginning.
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, pay particular attention to the publication date of the books. When reading books, you may want to look for book reviews or a critical analysis. Also, you could look for background information on the author which may give you insight of why that person wrote the book. Another aspect of the critical thinking process is the ability to narrow a research topic into smaller pieces. For example, your teacher has asked you to write a paper on an aspect of the American Civil War.