C. Stephanidis (Ed.): HCII 2014 Posters, Part I, CCIS 434, pp. 268–273, 2014. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014 A Contribution of Human-Computer Interaction to the New Process of Scientific Communication: The Case of ARCA, a Repository of Fiocruz, Brazil Viviane Santos O. Veiga, Aline da Silva Alves, Rejane Machado, Denise Nacif Pimenta, Cícera Henrique da Silva, and Maria da Conceição Carvalho Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Institute of Communication and Scientific and Technological Information in Health (ICICT), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil {viviane.veiga,aline.silva, rejane.machado,conceição.carvalho}@icict.fiocruz.br, cicera.silva@globo.com Abstract. Institutional Repositories (IR) are tools of information and communica- tion technologies (ICTs) which are altering the process of science communication and its impact on society. It aims primarily to improve the scientific communica- tion of institutions internally and externally, maximizing its accessibility, usage and visibility. Literature searches indicate a lack of usability studies about IR in- volving users in the task of self-archiving, a fundamental process in the change of culture and behavior of researchers, which improves RI adherence and suc- cess. Aiming to know more about this question, a usability study with five re- searchers in accomplishing the task of self-archiving in ARCA is presented. Co- operative evaluation and post-test questionnaires were applied and possible solu- tions to usability issues were identified and solved. As a result, despite the recog- nition of the benefits provided by the use of institutional repositories in terms of visibility of their scientific production, usability barriers of the interface have been contributing to the non-adherence. Other barriers identified were language transla- tion of the software; lack of immediate feedback overall, principally in the autho- rization of deposit; excess of information in the pages, often leading the user to er- ror. By evaluating interfaces and providing solutions to usability problems of re- positories, the area of Human-Computer Interaction has greatly aided in perfect- ing institutional repositories and the process of scientific communication as a whole. Keywords: Institutional Repository, Usability, Cooperative Evaluation, Self- archiving. 1 Introduction Institutional Repositories (IR) are tools of information and communication technolo- gies (ICTs) which are altering the process of science communication and its impact on society. It aims primarily to improve the scientific communication of institu- tions internally and externally, maximizing its accessibility, usage and visibility [1].