Prevent Plagiarism Day Date in the current year: February 19, 2024

According to Cambridge Dictionary, plagiarism is “the process or practice of using another person’s ideas or work and pretending that it is your own”. Although precise definitions of plagiarism may vary depending on the institution and situation, it is generally believed to violate multiple social norms, journalistic ethics, and academic integrity.

Some people confuse plagiarism with copyright infringement. While the two are related, they are two different matters that do not necessarily occur simultaneously. For example, when you distribute copyrighted content without permission but credit the source, you’re committing copyright infringement but not plagiarism; when you try to pass one of Shakespeare’s lesser known sonnets as your own, you’re committing plagiarism, but not copyright infringement because Shakespeare’s work is in public domain.

Another nuance about plagiarism and copyright infringement is that copyright does not protect ideas, but stealing someone else’s ideas and using them in your work is generally regarded as plagiarism. Plagiarism is typically considered not a crime in itself in most jurisdictions, but copyright infringement is. In other words, copyright infringement is a legal matter, whereas plagiarism is an ethical matter subject to various sanctions imposed by educational institutions, workplaces, search engines, etc.

Sadly, plagiarism is often not taken seriously when it comes to online content because some people think that once something is posted online, it’s up for grabs, but they couldn’t be more wrong. The fact that something is easy to steal doesn’t mean that it’s okay to steal it, and plagiarism is essentially theft of intellectual property and fraud simultaneously.

Prevent Plagiarism Day is the brainchild of freelance author and editor Jace Shoemaker-Galloway. Most of the holidays she created are fun and sometimes a little silly, but Shoemaker-Galloway’s reason for creating Prevent Plagiarism Day was far from fun. She decided to raise awareness of plagiarism after people calling themselves “writers” had repeatedly published her articles without permission or attribution.

Prevent Plagiarism Day aims to raise awareness of plagiarism in the arts, media, and academia, educate the general audience about the difference between plagiarism, copyright infringement and transformative uses of content (quoting, parodies, fan art and fan fiction, etc.), and inform content creators about the ways they can report plagiarism and protect their work and ideas.

There are many ways to observe Prevent Plagiarism Day. You can learn more about plagiarism, participate in anti-plagiarism events held by educational institutions and other organizations, share information about the ways to prevent plagiarism and the importance of its prevention, and spread the word about the holiday on social media with the hashtag #PreventPlagiarismDay.