Economics Literature (eLit), is designed to help researchers in the area of economics keep abreast of the vast flow of literature. Economics Literature issues contain commissioned, peer-reviewed survey and review articles, short communications, book reviews, an annotated bibliography of new books classified by subject matter, and a brief of dissertations in universities during the previous academic year.

Economics Literature is a new type of academic journal in economics. By involving a large research community in an innovative open peer review process, the journal aims to provide fast access to top- quality papers. Publishing is seen as a cooperative enterprise between authors, editors, referees, and readers. Economics Literature takes the form of an e-journal, i.e. submission, evaluation, and publication are electronic.

Economics Literature embodies the following principles:
Open Access: Following the principle that knowledge is a public good, the journal adheres to the BOAI definition of open access: that users have the right to "read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles".
Open Assessment: The traditional peer review process is substantially supplemented by a public peer review process in which the community of active researchers from all over the world has a hand in the evaluation process. Due to interactive peer review and public discussion, Economics Literature provides fast and efficient quality assurance.
Speed: Submitted papers that have been identified as sufficiently promising for a referee process are made available on the journal’s homepage within three weeks as discussion papers. Thus, the time for new ideas to find their way into the scientific community is substantially reduced.
Add-on Services: Interested readers can take advantage of alert services announcing new papers in their fields. As far as possible, Economics Literature also provides hyperlinks to the referenced literature.