The goal of the papers program is to advance the quality of scientific communication between the various disciplines of computational science and engineering in the context of high performance computing. The program was built from an observation that the computer science community traditionally publishes in the proceedings of major international conferences, while domain science communities publish primarily in disciplinary journals – and neither of which is read regularly by the other. The PASC Conference provides a unique venue that enables interdisciplinary exchange in a manner that bridges the two scientific publishing cultures.

Eight original research papers have been accepted for PASC18. These papers are presented as 30-minute talks and are published in the Proceedings of the PASC Conference, accessible via the ACM Digital Library. A selection of the highest quality papers are given the opportunity of a plenary presentation and/or are designated as "best papers". In selecting such papers, the Scientific Committee places particular weight on impact, interdisciplinarity and interest to a broad audience.