  We have developed a method to obtain robust quantitative bibliometric
indicators for several thousand scientists. This allows us to study the
dependence of bibliometric indicators (such as number of publications, number
of citations, Hirsch index...) on the age, position, etc. of CNRS scientists.
Our data suggests that the normalized h index (h divided by the career length)
is not constant for scientists with the same productivity but differents ages.
We also compare the predictions of several bibliometric indicators on the
promotions of about 600 CNRS researchers. Contrary to previous publications,
our study encompasses most disciplines, and shows that no single indicator is
the best predictor for all disciplines. Overall, however, the Hirsch index h
provides the least bad correlations, followed by the number of papers
published. It is important to realize however that even h is able to recover
only half of the actual promotions. The number of citations or the mean number
of citations per paper are definitely not good predictors of promotion.
