The BMJ starts 2009 with new ways to publish research. Sheila Hollinghurst, Paul Little, and their colleagues have worked with us to abridge the economic evaluation1 of their recent randomised controlled trial of the Alexander technique for chronic back pain.2 The full text open access article has already been published on bmj.com, with a video in which the authors discuss the concept, interventions, and interpretation of their work (also available on the BMJ’s YouTube channel3). Now we are publishing the abridged version in the print journal,4 with a commentary in our weekly BMJ podcast.5

We are calling the new abridged print format for research articles BMJ pico. It is essentially an extended abstract, similar to those published in ACP Journal Club and the BMJ Group’s evidence based journals. The abstract gives the research question, study design, and findings, along with details of funding and competing interests. We …