individually evaluates the applicant and their research, taking into account the interviewer’s report, and assigns a score between 1–10, with 10 being the best score. All applications are ranked according to their average score and decisions about approval or rejection are made after debate at a committee meeting. To test whether indeed young scientists were selected for funding who subsequent to application developed better than the rejected ones requires a generally accepted criterion for scientific merit. The number of publications is an indicator of a scientist’s research productivity. Scientific work will, if successful, result in publications [9]. An indicator for the impact of these pieces of work on the scientific community is the number of times the publications are cited in the scientific literature [10]. Both indicators provide criteria that allow us to appraise the scientific merit of the EMBO applicants [11–13]. We used for the evaluation the number of papers that were published by the applicants subsequent to application and the citations of these papers. Statistical analyses were also conducted with the citations of the papers that were published by the applicants prior to application. By using these standard bibliometric indicators for the analysis of the EMBO selection process, we try to answer the question, how accurately did the selection process predict the longer-term performance of a candidate [14]. Citation counts has been a controversial measure of both quality and scientific progress [15,16]. Nevertheless, Lokker, McKibbon, McKinlay, Wilczynski, and Haynes [17] succeeded in demon- strating for clinical articles that publications regarded shortly after their appearance as important by experts in the appropriate research field were cited much more frequently in subsequent years than publications that were less highly regarded. The Chemistry Division of the NSF carried out a citation analysis with the goal ‘‘to explore the use of this relatively new tool for what it Measuring Peer Review Quality might tell about the discipline and its practitioners.’’ The results of the study generally support the idea that citations are meaningful [18]. Furthermore, the results of a comprehensive citation content analysis conducted by Bornmann and Daniel [19] show that ‘‘an article with high citation counts had greater relevance for the citing author than an article with low citation counts’’ (p. 35). According to Evidence Ltd. – a knowledge-based company specializing in data analysis, reports and consultancy focusing on research performance – [20] ‘‘there is sufficient evidence available from experience and analysis to justify the general use of bibliometrics as an index of research performance’’ (p. 12). Methods Description of the dataset Our study involved 668 applicants to the LTF programme from the year 1998 (130 approved, 538 rejected) (see Figure 1). Out of the total of 710 LTF applicants in the full dataset [21] we included in the present study 668 (94%); 42 withdrawn applicants were excluded. The 668 LTF applicants published a total of 3,109 papers (articles, letters, notes, and reviews) prior to application (publication window: from 1993 to 1998) and 5,423 papers subsequent to application (publication window: from 1999 to the beginning of 2006). The papers published prior to application received an average of 44.90 citations (median = 22) (according to the Science Citation Index, SCI, provided by Thomson Reuters, Philadelphia, PA, USA) and the papers published subsequent to application an average of 22.57 citations (median = 9) (citation window: from publication year until the beginning of 2006). In addition to the applicants to the LTF programme, 297 applicants to the YI programme (39 approved and 258 rejected applicants) from the years 2001 and 2002 were included in the Figure 1. Data structure of this study. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003480.g001 PLoS ONE | www.plosone.org 2 October 2008 | Volume 3 | Issue 10 | e3480