Change reports text for bibliography

Question

I have a report style document:

\LoadClass[12pt,a4paper]{report}

and when I do:

\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\bibliography{references}

it shows :

Bibliography instead of References

Is it possible to change this?

Answer 1

It depends on the packages which are loaded.

If you don't use the package babel you can redefine the command \bibname as usual.

\renewcommand\bibname{References}

If you are using a documentclass of the type article you must redefine the command \refname. The procedure is equal.

If you load babel you can use the command above but only in the document body. To redefine in the header you must use:

\addto\captions<languagename>{\renewcommand\bibname{References}}

For example for ngerman it looks:

\addto\captionsngerman{\renewcommand\bibname{References}}

A whole example:

\documentclass[12pt,english,a4paper]{report}
\usepackage{babel}
%\renewcommand\bibname{References} doesn't work
\addto\captionsenglish{\renewcommand\bibname{References}}
\usepackage{natbib}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{references.bib}
@book{test,
author={John Smith},
title={Title},
year=2009,
}
\end{filecontents}
\begin{document}
\cite{test}
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\bibliography{references}
\end{document}