Dr. Jean-Claude Guédon is a professor of comparative literature at the Université de Montréal and a specialist of digital culture, internet studies, and electronic publishing, Dr. Guédon has been an advocate for open access to research for many years. He was one of the original signatories of the Budapest Open Access Initiative Declaration in 2002 and again of the BOAI 10 Declaration last year, and has served on the board of numerous international organizations that support openness and digital scholarship such as the Electronic Information for Libraries and the Information Programme of the Open Society Foundations.