The production of slow nucleons in semi-inclusive deep inelastic electron scattering off the deuteron is investigated in the region $x gsim 0.3$. It is shown that within the spectator mechanism the semi-inclusive cross section exhibits a scaling property even at moderate values of $Q^2$ ($sim$ few $(GeV/c)^2$) accessible at present facilities, like $CEBAF$. Such a scaling property can be used as a model-independent test of the dominance of the spectator mechanism itself and provides an interesting tool to investigate the neutron structure function. The possibility of extracting model-independent information on the neutron to proton structure function ratio from semi-inclusive experiments is illustrated. The application of the spectator scaling to semi-inclusive processes off complex nuclei is outlined.
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