What if your research paper got rejected with few comments given on paper?

If your paper is submitted to a journal, and is rejected among other reasons because it is not appropriate to the journal (subject is too obscure/specific, outside the area of interest of the paper, things like that), then you should not resubmit it to the same journal. You consider the comments made; if you believe they are in error for some reason, you contact the editor and explain why you believe they are in error. But this can only be done if they are objective errors. If it is a matter of difference of opinion (the referee thinks the results are not good enough, you do, for example), then you are probably better off going to a different journal unless the report specifically says that you can resubmit after addressing the comments.

It is certainly possible to resubmit to a different journal and get the paper published. Sometimes because the other journal is more appropriate to the paper. Often, because you take to heart the original referee comments and use them to improve the paper.

What you should never do is take a rejected paper and resubmit it as is to the same journal (even to a different editor) unless you have contacted the editor first, discussed why you believe the referee is in error, and the editor invites you to resubmit the manuscript.

You might also want to ask that a different referee be requested; for example, the referee may not be very reliable (after all, they didn't really make it very clear why they disliked the paper).

• Sometimes a paper might be rejected just because it doesn't meet the journal's high standards, not because there's anything really wrong with it. However, if a referee makes any substantive criticisms, it's almost always a mistake to submit the paper to another journal without making some revisions.

From "Advice for amateur mathematicians on writing and publishing papers" http://math.mit.edu/~cohn/Thoughts/advice.html (Henry Cohn's website)

And some other things to remember:

• If your paper is rejected, you can submit it to another journal, but you should not resubmit a revised version to the same journal unless they explicitly invite you to do so (which rarely happens).

• Choose a journal that publishes papers like yours (in terms of topic, style, length, importance, etc.). If you're not sure, go to the library and flip through some back issues until you find one that looks suitable. A good starting point is the journals that published the papers you cite. Each issue of a journal should explain where to send submissions.

• You cannot submit the same paper to two journals at once. If you are caught doing this, the editors will be angry with you and it will be hard to get your paper published. (You should also not submit simultaneously to two different editors at the same journal.)