Abstract: Steel plate shear walls with slits have good ductility and energy dissipation ability. As shear walls are not connected to frame columns, the premature overall buckling or local buckling failure of columns can be prevented. This paper presents the elastic buckling analysis of steel plate shear walls with slits connected with frame beams only. The influences of the width-to-thickness ratio and depth-to-width ratio of slit columns, and slit rows were analyzed. Also, the behavior of a slit column is studied to get the maximum height-to-thickness ratio when plastic hinges form at the bottom of the slit column. The results show that the steel plate shear wall with slits works in a plane if the slit height-to-width ratio is over 3.0 and the slit height-to-thickness ratio is less than 15.