"Review articles" can play an important role  as course reading assignments--or for students to use when they are doing research papers or projects. Such articles give a bird's eye view of the latest developments in a field or niche within a field. They can contain valuable bibliography.

Your subject librarian can assist in identifying review articles for your class. A collection of review articles can  serve as a set of primary or secondary readings for advanced classes. 

The titles of these articles often have a more generic quality than the titles of  articles reporting very specific research findings. For example, compare these titles:

• Volcanic impacts on modern glaciers: A global synthesis
• Active volcanism beneath the West Antarctic Ice-Sheet and Implications for Ice-Sheet Stability 

For more information about review articles, see:

• Review Articles: A (Very) Brief Introduction Western Libraries  

Examples of bibliographic databases that enable restriction of journal articles to "review" articles are Medline and Web of Science.  Annual Reviews Online is entirely devoted to review articles. (In these databases, make sure search results are in descending date order so you see the most recent articles for your topic. For many purposes, recent review articles are of greater interest.)