Drastic cuts that appeared in the draft state budget for 2015 may be liquidating for the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV), the institution claims in an open letter addressed to Prime Minister Robert Fico.
The letter calling for support for research in Slovakia was discussed and supported by the scientific councils of the majority of research institutes of SAV and it was also circulated by Institute of Molecular Biology. The published draft state budget for 2015 envisages an allocation of 50.5 million euros for SAV. As the open letter notes, this represents a decrease compared to 2014 by 16.9 percent. ”In practice this will mean a reduction of payroll spending by 10 percent and a further reduction of non-investment material funding. Such drastic cuts in the budget are liquidating for SAV,” the institution writes to the prime minister. The letter further points out that alongside large universities SAV is the most important centre of science and research in Slovakia. “SAV employs 11 percent of scientists and researchers in Slovakia, but produces 34 percent of publications to 39 percent of citations, which are the main internationally recognized quality indicators of scientific work,” the SAV letter states.
