Comparison of Different Types of Project Research Funding - the Case of Slovakia

Public research is in many countries performed by universities. There are actually more ways of funding research and finding the optimal one requires constant monitoring and comparing models already used in practice. Countries in Europe, and even beyond, use different systems and combine them as well. Slovakia, as one of many countries, uses a performance-based model for funding universities and their research; universities have a possibility to propose research projects to four different agencies providing a competitive mechanism for supporting research and development in Slovakia. This paper analyses the support of two of those agencies (their support being very similar) in the period of 2007 - 2015 with regard to 18 public universities, and it answers the questions how allocation of resources among universities was provided, and whether there are any differences in funding from these two sources. The paper concludes that besides the amount of grants and concentration of one agency on better performers, there are indeed no significant differences in the way of funding or allocation of resources. Therefore, it suggests that it is worth to consider whether just one research and development supporting agency would be more efficient also in stimulating researchers to be more competitive.