Keystone Journal
Keystone is a multidisciplinary, peer-reviewed publication dedicated to showcasing outstanding intellectual work. This includes original empirical research, theory, lit reviews/meta-analyses, creative pieces, book reviews, and more. We welcome a wide range of heterodox points of view from scholars at any stage of their career—from undergraduates and graduate students to seasoned professors to practitioners out in the field.
Current Issue
VOL. 12 | ISSUE 1 | 2026
Too Much of a Good Thing? Exploring Organizational Citizenship Behaviors as a Mediator of the Relationship Between Job Involvement and Stress
Anthony A. Goulstone & Darrin Kass
Job involvement, the degree to which individuals psychologically identify with their work and view it as central to their self-concept3, has been linked to both positive and negative outcomes for employees and organizations. This study investigated Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs), voluntary, helpful behaviors employees perform that go beyond their formal job responsibilities4, as a mediator of the relationship between job involvement and stress. Data from 114 MBA graduates revealed that job involvement was positively related to both OCBs and stress, and that OCBs partially mediated the relationship between job involvement and stress. These findings suggest that while job involvement can positively impact employee engagement and performance, it can also lead to increased stress and work-life imbalance. Implications for managing employee involvement and well-being are discussed, particularly for efforts to create a supportive workplace climate that can help buffer the effects of job involvement on stress.
VOL. 12 | ISSUE 1 | 2026
Rigor or Ruin: Sociology's Reckoning Has Arrived
Lawrence Michael Eppard
Sociology confronts an epistemological reckoning that threatens to exhaust whatever credibility the discipline retains. This article argues that the social sciences—and sociology most acutely—have normalized a systematic asymmetry in evidentiary standards: permissive toward ideologically congenial claims, stringent toward inconvenient ones. The result is a discipline in which overclaiming, causal overreach, idea laundering, and the conflation of advocacy with empirical inquiry have become endemic. Compounding these epistemological failures are precipitous enrollment declines and the imminent disruption posed by artificial intelligence, which promises to collapse the informational asymmetries that have insulated imprecise scholarship from proper scrutiny.
VOL. 12 | ISSUE 1 | 2026
The Social Work Learning Climate: An Assessment of Implicit Diversity and Inclusion Curriculum
Allyson Wolfe, Atlantis D. Leonard, & Michael J. Lyman
Upon graduation, BSW and MSW students are given a survey to take that evaluates the Department of Social Work and Gerontology at Shippensburg University. The survey attempts to address student views on how implicit curriculum related to anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion was embedded in the program. Along with this, the surveys have helpful information that assists the department in the reaccreditation process. This article aims to investigate areas where the department did well and areas that need improvement, based on student responses. Student responses indicated the department does well in discussing diversity and acceptance; however, there are less positive responses when discussing general support students feel from the department.