How to remove the section number from References?

Question

I am using the following for the bibliography part:

\bibliographystyle{APA} 
\bibliography{Bibliography/mybib} 

and I am getting a section number for the reference part. How can I remove it (I just want to have the title References without any number before it)?

Here are the coding structure

 \documentclass[twocolumn,a4paper,10pt]{article}
 \usepackage{natbib}
 \usepackage[nottoc,numbib]{tocbibind}
 \usepackage{etoolbox}
 \apptocmd{\thebibliography}{\scriptsize}{}{}
 \newcounter{numbersec}
 \renewcommand{\section}[1]{\par\noindent\stepcounter{numbersec}
 \par
 \vspace{6pt}
 \noindent\textbf{\large   \arabic{numbersec} \hspace*{0.3cm} #1 }
 \par
 \vspace{2pt}
 }
 \renewcommand{\subsection}[1]{
 \par
 \vspace{6pt}
 \noindent\textbf{#1}
 \par
 }
\renewcommand{\subsubsection}[1]{%
\par
\vspace{6pt}
\textbf{#1.}
}
\renewcommand{\bibname}{References}

... the body of the file...

\bibliographystyle{APA} 
\bibliography{Bibliography/mybib} 

Answer 1

The apparent redefinition of \section is problematic in a number of ways. It disables the cross-referencing mechanism and does not provide for ToC entries or headers. Worse, it does not preclude page breaks immediately after a section heading. And -- as Karl Koeller has pointed out -- it does not provide a starred (non-numbered) version. As the thebibliography environment of the article class relies on \section*, your template will result in a numbered bibliography section (which will display an unwanted asterisk after the number).

I recommended to abandon the template and to use either the standard \section(*) command or a modified version which isn't missing essential features. In case you absolutely have to use the above, deficient template, add the following to your preamble to provide a starred, non-numbered version of \section:

\usepackage{suffix}
\WithSuffix\newcommand\section*[1]{%
\par
\vspace{6pt}%
\noindent\textbf{\large #1 }%
\par
\vspace{2pt}%
}

MWE:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{natbib}

\newcounter{numbersec}
\renewcommand{\section}[1]{%
\stepcounter{numbersec}%
\par
\vspace{6pt}%
\noindent\textbf{\large \arabic{numbersec} \hspace*{0.3cm} #1 }%
\par
\vspace{2pt}%
}

\usepackage{suffix}
\WithSuffix\newcommand\section*[1]{%
\par
\vspace{6pt}%
\noindent\textbf{\large #1 }%
\par
\vspace{2pt}%
}

\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@misc{A01,
  author = {Author, A.},
  year = {2001},
  title = {Alpha},
}
\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}

\nocite{*}

\bibliographystyle{APA}
\bibliography{\jobname}

\end{document}