ABSTRACT - Does your article have an abstract (short summary) at the beginning of the article? This element is typically included in research-level articles.
AUTHOR - Can you determine the author(s) of your article? What kind of information can you identify about them (ex. university affiliation, etc.) that might indicate their expertise in the field?
DATES - Is your article recent? If not, is the content still relevant to your topic? Music scholarship often relies on building the historical body of knowledge, but be aware of the impact of an article's publication date on your topic. You may need to see if scholarly perception of an article's conclusion has changed.
CITATIONS - Does your article contain bibliographic citaitons and a literature review? Both are common elements of scholarly research articles.
GRAPHICS - Does the article include tables/charts/graphs that illustrate the author's points or are the graphics just visuals to break up space? Scholarly articles do not tend to include graphics that are not referenced within the article.
BIAS - If your article comes from a source whose URL ends in .com or .org, can you find the mission of the organization publishing the article? These sources are not always biased, but they require more scrutiny in your review.