Here are some important terms that you should familiarize yourself with, as they will help you with understanding the different words you will encounter when you are looking for articles.
Citation/Reference - A description of a resource, including information on where and when it was published.
Database - Can contain a variety of resources, but are often focused on a particular discipline (for example, health sciences or sociology) or type of resource (for example, statistics, or videos). Examples of databases include: Canadian Newsstream and Google Scholar.
Journal - Academic articles are published in journals. Journals are shorter than monographs/books and tend to be much more specific in their subject matter. For example, there are some journals that focus on 3D printing, others that focus on abnormal psychology, and even some that focus on human behaviours in social environments.
Monograph - A document that is generally considered to be complete by itself. An example of a monograph would be a book or pamphlet.
Peer-reviewed - A process in which several scholars/experts in a subject area review a resource in order to determine if it is worthy of being published. Once a resource "passes" this process and is published, it is considered as a peer-reviewed resource.
Periodical/Serial - A source that is published at regularly recurring intervals. Examples of periodicals include: Journal articles, magazine articles and newspaper articles.
Scholarly Article - An article that is written by a scholar/expert and is published within a journal. Many scholarly articles are peer-reviewed.