These articles report original research or studies (actual observations or experiments), rather than theoretical developments or methodological approaches. You can identify them in several ways:
- keywords: look for “study,” “empirical,” or mentions of participants, observations, methods/measurements
- structure: usually includes introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections
- publication: should be in an academic or professional journal, rather than in popular magazines or newspapers
PsycINFO is a good first place to check! This database contains scholarly journals that publish empirical research articles.