If an article cites another journal article, would that make you believe more in the author's claims and arguments? Are scholarly materials automatically trustworthy, authoritative or credible? Even if an article cites multiple academic journals, if something sounds too good to be true, it doesn't hurt to fact check first!
Do you know what exactly are academic journals? Heard of peer-review or journal rankings such as impact factor? Read more about the tips on how to evaluate academic journals below.
When you come across an article that cites academic journals next time, try thinking about these:
One additional check you can do with journals and their articles is to check their journal metrics. In a nutshell, journal metrics are a measure of how good a journal’s performance is. One of these metrics is the journal's impact factor. The impact factor "measures the number of times an average paper in a particular journal has been referred to" - Elsevier.
There are several journal metrics out there and you can start with these:
Do note that there are fake impact factor companies who exist to supplement 'predatory journals/publishers'.
Not quite convinced yet that academic journals may not always be authoritative?
Here are some articles that may be of interest to you:
Nature: Predatory journals recruit fake editor
Forbes: Fake Medical Journals are Spreading, And They are Filled with Bad Science
The Guardian: Nonsense paper written by iOS autocomplete accepted for conference