The Common focuses its efforts on the motif of "a modern sense of place", and works to give the underrepresented artistic voices a literary space.

In early 2011, Jennifer Acker obtained an investment from Amherst College as a literary magazine focused on the motif of place in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and visual arts.

At the magazine's inception, Amherst College provided an on-campus office, a website, funding for start-up costs, and the budget for a staff of student interns.

The Common has published new fiction by Lauren Groff, Fiona Maazel, Sabina Murray, and Teresa Svoboda, essays by Sarah Smarsh, W. Ralph Eubanks, and Susan Straight, and poems by Rafael Campo, Don Share, Honor Moore, Bob Hicok, Fatimah Asghar, David Lehman, J. D. McClatchy, John Freeman, and Mary Jo Salter.

The Best American Series, whose editors have included Dave Eggers, Denise Duhamel, Cheryl Strayed, Elizabeth Strout, and Mark Doty, has named particular The Common issues and stories as belonging to their top lists of prose, poetry, and essays between the years 2012 and 2014.

[5] The journal's editorial vision and design has also been praised in The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, Slate, The Millions, Orion Magazine, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.