Postgraduates students must produce a thesis or dissertation in order to graduate from The University of the Western Cape (UWC) and are archived in an open access repository called the UWCScholar- Electronic Thesis Dissertation (ETD) Repository. The institution owns the copyright to these outputs, any embargoes or restrictions on the publication of theses are applied as required, such as when an author is preparing an article for publication.

The ETD repository holds full-text theses submitted for degree purposes since 2004, with selected titles prior to 2004. The thesis print collection will be gradually reduced as they are digitized and added to the ETD repository and made available online.

On completion of a masters and doctoral thesis, students are required to submit their dissertation to the ETD Submission Portal, hosted by the library, as part of the graduation workflow. Closer to each graduation season, training is provided at institutional level, and organised at faculty and departmental level.