On the Web, Research Work Proves Ephemeral (washingtonpost.com)

Essentially, web URLs are becoming often used as references in scholarly works. However, the rate at which these resources as a whole move around, change and disappear, defeats the purpose of references in the first place.

At first it seems like an obvious observation but when you think about it, this is a central problem with the web as it is today that we will have to address somehow for the culture to keep moving forward.