Papyri scrolls leaping to e-books?

This might be a strange, and obscure question: What would academic papers look like if we had jumped from Papyri scrolls straight to e-books (or any sort of reading in a digital format). This means that codex/books, as we call them today, were skipped over. How would we have cited authoritative sources in our research papers without page numbers? Background: I run a publishing company that is focusing on digital-first books. This problem which accompanies e-publishing frustrates the heck out of me, and I hope to somehow solve it so that e-books can be used in research/academic writings.