  Absolute total cross sections for electron capture between slow, highly
charged ions and alkali targets have been recently measured. It is found that
these cross sections follow a scaling law with the projectile charge which is
different from the one previously proposed basing on a classical over-barrier
model (OBM) and verified using rare gases and molecules as targets. In this
paper we develop a "semi-classical" (i.e. including some quantal features) OBM
attempting to recover experimental results. The method is then applied to
ion-hydrogen collisions and compared with the result of a sophisticated
quantum-mechanical calculation. In the former case the accordance is very good,
while in the latter one no so satisfactory results are found. A qualitative
explanation for the discrepancies is attempted.
