We propose and compare some design criteria for the search of good systematic rate-compatible punctured turbo code (RCPTC) families. The considerations presented by S. Benedetto et al. (1998) to find the “best” component encoders for turbo code construction are extended to find good rate-compatible puncturing patterns for a given interleaver length N . This approach is shown to lead to codes that improve over previous ones, both in the maximum-likelihood sense (using transfer function bounds) and in the iterative decoding sense (through simulation results). To find simulation and analytical results, the coded bits are transmitted over an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel using an antipodal binary modulation. The two main applications of this technique are its use in hybrid incremental ARQ/FEC schemes and its use to achieve unequal error protection of an information sequence.