Prof. Jean-Claude Guédon began his career at Glendon College (York University) in Toronto, Ontario in 1970 and has been a professor at the Université de Montréal since 1973, first in the Institut d'histoire et de sociopolitique des sciences, and, since 1987, in the Département de littérature comparée. He is a long-time member of the Internet Society serving as co-chair of the program committee in 1996, 1998 and 2000, and member of the same committee in 1997, 1999 and 2002.

In 1991, with Bill Readings and Walter Moser, he launched the first electronic scholarly journal in Canada: Surfaces. Between 1998 and 2003, he was Chair of the Advisory Board for CNSLP (Canadian National Site Licence Project, now known as CRKN (Canadian Research Knowledge network). From 2002 until 2006, he was a member of OSI's Information Program sub-board. Between 2003 and 2007, he was a member of the Advisory Board of eIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries). In 2006 he was elected (until November 2008) Vice-President of the Canadian Society for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

He has advised numerous governmental bodies, including the Ministère de la Recherche (France) for their e-publication project in the humanities and the social sciences; the Agence de la francophonie for matters pertaining to new technologies; the Quebec Minister of Communication in charge of the information highway; and the Quebec Ministry of education for the integration of the new technologies into the curriculum. He regularly acts as expert for the European Commission. He is also on the editorial board of several journals, and his three books are all available in Italian. He is on the advisory board of Redalyc, an open access publishing platform based in Mexico, and he was invited to write an analysis for the 15th anniversary of the Budapest Open Access Initiative: "Open Access: Toward the Internet of the Mind".

During his visit at the Nexa Center, prof. Guédon interacted with the staff and the fellows of the Nexa Center and worked on a research whose findings were presented during the 31st NEXA Wednesday (May 11, 2011): Toward a distributed mass digitization