The last two decades have witnessed several advances in the field of head and neck squamous cell carcinomas. This has been made possible because of the better understanding of biology of cancer, and numerous advances in diagnostic and therapeutic interventions. Having said that, prevention of these cancers remains an enigma and early detection continues to be a hot topic of research.

Having miserably failed in significantly improving the overall survival of HNSCC over the last 3 decades, prevention and early detection seem to be the only ray of hope. The old adage “prevention is better than cure” holds especially true for Head and Neck cancers because of the following: (1) they have known etiology such as tobacco, HPV, and so forth; (2) they are easily accessible for clinical examination such as oral cavity, oropharynx, and so on; (3) most of them have a distinct precancer phase; (4) the treatment of early cancer/precancer can be curative; (5) the molecular pathways of carcinogenesis are well known. Despite this background, Head and Neck squamous cell carcinomas are still public health problems world over especially in low-resource countries.

This special issue aims to offer a platform to all eminent clinician scientists engaged in this issue to share their work with head and neck community world over. This issue aims to publish the articles related to cancer prevention, early detection, screening, and related translational research. The issue will specially emphasize on the key advances witnessed in this field over the last decade. The topics to be covered include, but are not limited to:

• Etiology–new information on causative agents
• Prevention–tobacco, alcohol, HPV, EBV, UV rays, and so on related researches
• Screening–clinical and translational researches aimed at evolving better screening tools
• Chemoprevention of common head and neck cancers
• Molecular pathways and biomarkers relevant to screening or prevention
• Epidemiological studies in this area

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jo/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: