Science AMA Series: Hi, I’m Dr. John Adler, inventor of the CyberKnife, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Cureus Journal of Medical Science and Professor of Neurosurgery at Stanford University. Ask me anything!

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Hi reddit!

Since 1987 I have been an academic neurosurgeon at Stanford University. During my professional career I also invented the CyberKnife, and in doing so, the field of image-guided radiation. To date the CyberKnife has been used to treat more than one million patients, and derivative technologies have treated millions more. During my years in academia and the medical device industry I have come to appreciate the importance and power of peer-reviewed journals in guiding the practice of healthcare worldwide. From my own experience and frustration with the medical publishing process, I recently co-founded a next generation Open Access medical journal called Cureus.

Peer-reviewed journals are an essential element of the bedrock underlying scientific progress. However, publishing in traditional journals has long been a time-consuming, complex and costly process. Although an unpaid workforce of highly skilled authors and reviewers does the hardest work in medical publishing, very expensive subscription fees typically limit the scope of readership. The alternative Open Access publishing system requires authors, many of whom lack significant research funding, to “pay to play.”

Tragically, so many financial and procedural barriers are preventing the widespread generation and dissemination of medical knowledge, which as a point of fact, can be life saving in many cases. To my way of thinking something is very wrong with this existing system; access to advanced medical knowledge can and should be a human right! With this objective in mind, Cureus aspires to disrupt the status quo by making both the publishing and reading of quality peer-reviewed journal articles free, and thereby opening up the floodgates of medical knowledge to all of humanity.

Now that you know what I’m up to, I turn the floor over to you - ask me anything about neurosurgery, Cureus, the CyberKnife, medical publishing or anything else that you can think of.

I'll be back at 1 pm EST to answer your questions. Bring it on!

">Science AMA Series: Hi, I’m Dr. John Adler, inventor of the CyberKnife, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Cureus Journal of Medical Science and Professor of Neurosurgery at Stanford University. Ask me anything!