I had submitted a manuscript to Cell, but it got rejected. What are my options and how do I proceed ahead?

Sorry to know that your manuscript was rejected. Rejection by a journal is not the end of the world. You can always improvise your manuscript and submit it to another journal. If the journal has mentioned the reason for rejection, then you could work on addressing it before submitting it to another journal. If there is no proper reason specified, then you could possibly consult your peers or seniors working in your field and ask them for an opinion on your manuscript. Use the constructive feedback that they offer to improvise on your manuscript. You could also read  your manuscript again and introspect on possible ways in which you could improve on it. Sometimes, reading your own work after a while may result in you yourself identifying possible gaps that exist in your work or maybe in the way you have presented your work.

There are also professional pre-submission peer-review services that can help you with the reviewing of your manuscript before you submit it.

You could consider using Enago’s professional Pre-Submission Peer Review to get a detailed analysis of your manuscript along with constructive feedback to improvise on it. You could choose from a range of specialized reviewers and get a review from upto three reviewers to get different perspectives on your work. This will ensure that you submit a high quality manuscript to your next target journal, thereby increasing it’s chances of publication.

Lastly, you also need to give a thought to the journal that you are selecting. Merely selecting a journal that is renowned in your field is not sufficient. You need to select a journal whose aims and scope match that of your manuscript. You also need to ensure that it published the type of article that you intend to publish. Spending a good amount of time and effort on journal selection can also go a long way in preventing the rejection of your ,manuscript.