There are different types of scholarly texts within your subject. The most common ones are books, chapters, articles and dissertations. Sometimes it can be hard to determine if the text you have found is a legitimate source and in what context it can be used.
To help you decide if a source is appropriate four your essay you can ask yourself the following questions:
In this film you can learn more about how to tell if an article is peer reviewed and get some tips on how to read a scholarly article:
Here you can find more information on scholarly texts