what is a peer reviewed article

You will need to look at the journal information to find out if the articles it publishes are peer-reviewed. If the article is from a printed journal, look at the publication information in the front of the journal. If the article is from an electronic journal, go to the journal home page and look for a link to ‘About this journal’ or ‘Notes for Authors’. Here it should tell you if the articles are peer-reviewed.
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Peer reviewed journals (also sometimes called refereed journals) include only articles that have gone through a process of feedback and iteration before publication. In short, this means that:
Keep in mind that articles from peer reviewed journals are considered scholarly, but not all scholarly articles are from peer reviewed journals (in other words, just because an article was not published in a peer reviewed journal, doesn’t automatically mean it isn’t considered a scholarly source).

The following characteristics list provides features of a Scholarly Article:
To see if a publication is peer-reviewed, check if the journal requires:

Peer reviewed articles, a lso known as scholarly or refereed articles, have been evaluated by several researchers or subject specialists in the academic community prior to being accepted for publication.
Peer review is certainly not a perfect system, but it is the current model for ensuring high quality research in most scholarly journal articles. Read more about Peer Review.

References:

http://libanswers.snhu.edu/faq/8665
http://libguides.lehman.edu/peer-review/characteristics
http://researchguides.library.brocku.ca/LearningObjects/peerreview
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/article