un-renaming the REFERENCES page, with gatech-thesis and natbib

Question

I'm using the gatech-thesis documentclass with the natbib package.

When I use natbib, the title of the references section title changes from REFERENCES to Bibliography. I want to change it back to REFERENCES.

I've seen some posts that talk about using the babel package and \renewcommand appropriately for report or article document class, but I couldn't get it to work.

Here's my MWE, thanks in advance for any help!

\documentclass{gatech-thesis}
%\usepackage[numbers]{natbib} 
% would like to uncomment this package without renaming the references section
\begin{document}
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\references
\end{document}

Worst cast scenario, I'd could abandon natbib in order to get the formatting right; but I'd rather not have to.

EDIT: I compile it with: pdflatex foo.tex; bibtex foo.tex; pdflatex foo.tex and the output is a single page with either REFERENCES or Bibliography at the top, depending on whether natbib is enabled.

Answer 1

This works for me (TL 2014), not much ado...

\renewcommand{\bibname}{REFERENCES} does the job, since natbib only uses a \providecommand{\bibname}, so it's possible to redefine the macro either before or after \usepackage{natbib}

\documentclass{gatech-thesis}
\usepackage[numbers]{natbib} 

\renewcommand{\bibname}{REFERENCES}


\begin{document}
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\references
\end{document}

Alternative solution, for usage with babel

\documentclass{gatech-thesis}
\usepackage[english,strings]{babel}
\usepackage[numbers]{natbib} 

\StartBabelCommands{english}{extras}%
\SetString{\bibname}{REFERENCES}
\EndBabelCommands

\begin{document}
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\references
\end{document}

Answer 2

The natbib package uses \bibsection for the chapter title and it basically defines it as

\chapter*{\bibname}

if \chapter is defined. So it's sufficient to reinstate the gatech-thesis way:

\documentclass{gatech-thesis}
\usepackage[numbers]{natbib}

\makeatletter
% code in lines 2660-2664 of gatech-thesis.cls
\renewcommand{\bibsection}{%
 \chapter*{\MakeUppercase{\refname}}
    \@mkboth{\scshape\MakeUppercase\refname}%
            {\scshape\MakeUppercase\refname}%
    \pagestyle{\body@pagestyle}% REFERENCES uses BODY pagestyle, not endmatter.
    \vskip 0.5in
}
\makeatother

\bibfiles{xampl} % use your own

\begin{document}
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}

\tableofcontents

\chapter{Hello!}

A citation: \cite{article-minimal}

Another: \cite{mastersthesis-minimal}

\references

\end{document}

This is independent of babel, because it uses \refname and not a fixed string.