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First, put up the small placard that says, “Solicitors without a prior appointment will be refused admission to any home in this neighborhood.”That will stop a few, but not all.For the brave and the few (or the stupid): Make a list with the title “AUTHORIZED CALLERS.” Those words should be big enough to be visible to someone standing in front of you as you hold the list.Now enter some names of authorized callers, real or imagined. Maybe this:Neighborhood association membersPublic Service (fire, rescue, police, etc.) in the conduct of their work.Postal workersContractorsFurman Ice Cream TreatsJulies’ Wholesale Meat and Produce…Use your imagination. Nice long list.Keep the list near your door (inside)Now prepare a CALLER APPLICATION FORM. Make it hideously complex. Personal names and contact data, vehicle license numbers, solicitor’s license number, organization name and contact data, DUNS number, tax ID number, service of suit info., in business since, convicted of any felonies (what, and when) etc. etc. This takes some time, but you only need to do it once.Now the fun starts. Knock-knock:You: May I help you?Caller: Hi, we’re from…You: Hold on. (Grab your list). Oh, I see you are not on the authorized list. I can’t talk to you.Caller: Authorized list? But-You: Yeah, we’re not allowed to talk to anyone who is not approved. Here’s an application (hand them the app). Fill that in and mail it to the address on the bottom together with the non-returnable application fee. Thanks.As they gape at the list, you close the door.Enjoy.

If it was really rejected and not a major revision request with critical comments, then it is most likely that there is an error or bug in the system somewhere. It could be that although your paper was rejected, it somehow got stuck in the editorial system of the first journal and was not registered as such. It could be that the system takes 24 hours to be updated and you submitted to the new journal within that 24 hour period, before the database had registered that your paper had been rejected. It could be that another paper with a very similar title has been submitted elsewhere by someone else and the editor who handled your latest submission is not experienced enough to know how to check for that.Email the editors of both journals including everything that has happened from your point of view, including the manuscript title, authors and manuscript numbers for both journals. Attach the rejection letter from the first journal. Ask them to look it up in their system and find out what the supposed match was that made it appear to be a simultaneous submission.

This is your advisor's job. Why aren't they helping you?Do you have a good related work section? Maybe you don't know how to write one; most people don't, and confuse it for a bibliography. A related work section doesn't just list other papers: it relates. My style is typically per other paper to write a paragraph: I mention the paper, write a sentence or two summarizing its key contribution, then a sentence or two describing the relationship between that paper and mine: note that relationship goes both ways (usually my paper is doing something better than theirs, but even then, sometimes their paper does something better than mine; or the circumstances are different and I explain this). If a group of papers is very similar and all have the same relationship, then I lump them all together into one paragraph.If you have a honest and thorough related work section, you should be able to answer the reviewers' criticism for yourself. My guess is that that's what you are lacking.Note: Don't take the «Reviewers have also acknowledged that it seems to be an important problem.» part too seriously. In some conferences, the review form has explicit boxes for "Points in favor" and "Points against". Reviewers don't like to leave a section blank. If they can't say anything else nice about a paper, they will write something bland like "Important area". Note that even if entirely genuine, it's still a statement about the area, not about your work or your paper. For instance, distributed consensus is an important area, even though there have been hundreds of papers in it and yours may not say anything new relative to what was known in 1990.Finally: if your reviewers all claim there's nothing novel but not one of them cites a single other paper for you to look up, that's just irresponsible. You may have some luck writing to the program chair and saying "I got three reviews that all claimed my work is not novel but not one provided a citation for me to look up; can you please ask them to give me one or two pointers to follow?" Be sure to keep your message short and to the point, and give them all the relevant information they would need to quickly look up your reviewers (e.g., paper number, title, authors).